It's probably more light than you need, but there probably isn't such thing as too much light. My old 20g was lit by a 250w and it did OK for its time.
There is such thing, however, as light shock from going from one intensity to another. To go from 175W to 400W will take some ramping of the photoperiod in order to prevent UV burn.
A few years back I once had a 175W bulb crack and the outer globe slid partially off the bulb, leaving the inner arc tube partially exposed (and still lit). Even though I happened to come for lunch that day and noticed right away (so it was only about 1 hour on the tank since the light would have come on at 11am), pretty much everything that was underneath that bulb (that couldn't hide) was fried. I did lose several pieces of acro including a gorgeous purple acro that looked just like Sam's does now in his picture thread. I never again did find one that looked quite like that, but seeing Sam's purple acro now after its colour change reminded me of this whole story which I had almost forgotten about completely.
__________________
-- Tony
My next hobby will be flooding my basement while repeatedly banging my head against a brick wall and tearing up $100 bills. Whee!
|