Fishkeeping - Lighting choices ?

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Lighting choices ?

Hello,
I am setting up a 180 tank with plans to do soft corals - mushrooms,
leathers, etc., maybe xenia. The tank size is 72"x24"x24".
I am tring to pick the right lighting system and am considering the
following -
Coralife Aqualight Pro - 3 MH 175watt and 4 PC atinics
or
Outer Orbit - 3 MH175 watt and 4 PC 96W atinics
or
Maristar with 2 or 3 175w MHI and 4 39w T-5

Any comments? recommendations? suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

H

Lighting choices ?

I have a 180 g and went with the coralife Pro. Fans are a little noisey but
I don't know what to compare them with.
Other then that I think they are great, Mine are the 250 watt MH. But
other then that its identical.
Bill
"hhhh" wrote in message
. ..
Hello,
I am setting up a 180 tank with plans to do soft corals - mushrooms,
leathers, etc., maybe xenia. The tank size is 72"x24"x24".
I am tring to pick the right lighting system and am considering the
following -
Coralife Aqualight Pro - 3 MH 175watt and 4 PC atinics
or
Outer Orbit - 3 MH175 watt and 4 PC 96W atinics
or
Maristar with 2 or 3 175w MHI and 4 39w T-5

Any comments? recommendations? suggestions are welcome and appreciated.

H

Lighting choices ?

Wayne Sallee wrote:
So many people purchase lights without figuring out the watts per
gallon. 4 watts per gallon will be fine for the soft corals that you
want to keep.

Is this what some of the vendors call "medium light"?

George Patterson
Coffee is only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to
your slightly older self.

Lighting choices ?

I've never heard of a vendor calling a lighting system as
"medium light", it would depend on what aquarium it was
put on.

I guess you are referring to light requirement ratings for
corals. If so, then yea it would be.

I get so many customers buying a coral ask "should I put
this coral at the top, or down low", and I just want to
scream "If you would just buy good lighting, you would not
have to ask such silly questions!". But I just ask "how
many watts of light do you have?", and they usually don't
even know.

Wayne Sallee
Wayne's Pets

George Patterson wrote on 8/3/2006 11:55 AM:
Wayne Sallee wrote:
So many people purchase lights without figuring out the watts per
gallon. 4 watts per gallon will be fine for the soft corals that you
want to keep.

Is this what some of the vendors call "medium light"?

George Patterson
Coffee is only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to
your slightly older self.

Lighting choices ?

Wayne Sallee wrote:
So many people purchase lights without figuring out the watts per
gallon.

I've been thinking about this, and it doesn't seem right. Different types of
lighting have different efficiency characteristics. The usual standard for
measurement of light is lumens. Spectrum is, of course, also important in this
field, but I think that lumens would be the most important figure for measuring
intensity. Watts per gallon would only work when comparing two fixtures of the
same type; for example, two fluorescent fixtures.

George Patterson
Coffee is only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to
your slightly older self.

Lighting choices ?

No lumens is not as good as you think it is. Lumens is the
measure of visible light as your eyes see it. And your
eyes see the yellow spectrum better than any other
spectrum. There's a lot of different qualities of light to
look at. Naturally one can't put cheesy incandescent
lights over their tank, and say they have enough watts per
gallon, but watts per gallon of quality lighting is really
the best way that is easily figured for judging how much
light you have.

Wayne Sallee
Wayne's Pets

George Patterson wrote on 8/3/2006 10:49 PM:
Wayne Sallee wrote:
So many people purchase lights without figuring out the watts per gallon.

I've been thinking about this, and it doesn't seem right. Different
types of lighting have different efficiency characteristics. The usual
standard for measurement of light is lumens. Spectrum is, of course,
also important in this field, but I think that lumens would be the most
important figure for measuring intensity. Watts per gallon would only
work when comparing two fixtures of the same type; for example, two
fluorescent fixtures.

George Patterson
Coffee is only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to
your slightly older self.

Lighting choices ?

George Patterson wrote:
Wayne Sallee wrote:

So many people purchase lights without figuring out the watts per gallon.

I've been thinking about this, and it doesn't seem right. Different
types of lighting have different efficiency characteristics. The usual
standard for measurement of light is lumens. Spectrum is, of course,
also important in this field, but I think that lumens would be the most
important figure for measuring intensity. Watts per gallon would only
work when comparing two fixtures of the same type; for example, two
fluorescent fixtures.

George Patterson
Coffee is only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to
your slightly older self.
George,

You are correct. Watts per gallon are just about meaningless, since it
does not cover the depth of the tank, nor the light source. But with no
other info it can give you some information.

With lights another important thing is the reflector. This is why a 4
bulb 54 watt T5 setup will put out as much or more light than a 4 bulb
110 watt VHO light setup. The single bulb reflectors for t5 bulbs are
much better than what is normally used on t12 vho bulbs. It is also why
a 250 watt HQI metal halide can produce more usuable light than a 400
watt single ended bulb.

On Lumens. To use they don't mean much since red light as many lumens
ase blue light and the red does not contribute to photosynthisis. For a
good measurment you need to find out the PAR of the lights. Which is
very hard to find. You will find that there are some hobbiest that are
publishing PAR data for some light, but most of them are on Metal Halide
light.

To be honest any time I see somebody use the watts per gallon measure
ment I cringe. 250 watts over a 65 gallon hex tank is a lot less
usuable light than 250 watts over a normal 65 gallon 4 foot tank since
everything is closer to the lights on the 4 foot 65 gallon tank than the
65 gallon hex.

Kim Gross
www.jensalt.com