[BCReefer]

I am the 1st to admit that most of what you guys are saying really goes over my head. I have read Sanjay’s article in the 2002 USA Marine Magazine and I understand part of what he is saying, same goes for what most of you have written down. My understanding of lighting is as such:

1. We need to supply lighting that closely as possible duplicates that sun on the ocean.
2. We have basically 3 types of lighting that comes close to it, MH, HQI, VHO.
3. Each type of lighting has a wattage, the wattage is used primarily to indicate the depth that the light would reach and the strength of the light if a coral was lets say 12” from the bulb.
4. Each bulb has a Kelvin rating - which is the colour spectrum of the bulb. Now my understanding is that the sun has a Kelvin rating of around 5500 – 6000 kelvins.

Now if I was to plan on a new tank, say 4’ x 18” depth x 18” width I would use the above information to make my plans.

1. Based upon Sanjay’s article I would use the 2 - 150W HQI 6500K as it seemed to have the best PPFD, (of course I don’t totally understand what PPFD is but I believe it how we measure the bulbs?).
2. I would use 2 VHO’s 96 W to help supplement the lighting since from my basic experience MH seems to have the brightest point directly below the bulb.
3. 1 would use 2 high wattage actincs 45 – 60 W, to supplement the other lighting in the blue colour range. I understand that some people like the blue look so they might have more actincs to show that on their tank.

Does my logic make sense or do I have to much lighting? I currently have a 175W 6500 K system (1 month old bulb) with 2 30W actinics ( 4 months old), but I have a yellow tinge to my water. I would like to make it more brighter so I thought of adding 2 small compact lighting that we discussed a few months ago. I am not really looking at the new lighting to add to my colour spectrum, more of a look to the tank. Does this make sense?

My last question. Does one form of light interfere with other lighting. Lets say we have a 400W 10K system on my 33G. If the lighting is not giving enough light from a particular colour spectrum and I supplement it with actincs. Would the 400W, be so powerful that it would block the rays from actinics.

Sorry guys, hope I haven’t taken this off to a different path?

Thanks
Patrick