Water Temp And Lighting

[KJHLCH]

I just setup a 20g h a few days ago and was wondering what the ideal temp should be. It is currently 82 F, is this to high? The light used is 96 W aqualight that sits 2.5 inches off the water. Is this to close and how long should the light be running?

[Doglover_50]

82 is at the upper range of normal. tank temp is a huge debate, but I'll go on the limb and say in general if you keep it 78-82 you are okay. a bigger issue is--try not to have any big swings in temperature--e.g., more than 3 degrees-ish in a day. this is a problem because the lights can warm up your tank over the course of the day (why some people use chillers on big tanks)
Height of the bulb: one issue will be do your best to clean salt off the bulb occasionally--most important if you have corals--it affects wavelengths of the light.
--Also a debate on light time. However, a safe answer is 10-12 hours per day (the issue is--what time of lamp. Some pros start the day with actinic, then run their metal halides for fewer hours to mimic direct sunlight, then off goes the MH and back to actinic, etc...). Fortunately, figuring out exactly what works for you won't harm any corals---you have time to play with that and corals won't sustain any damage---it's in the long run this could be an issue.

[victor_c3]

I don't have my tank 100% up and running yet (so I don't really know what I'm talking about), but to help me decide what temp and salinity to use I looked at all of the last 2 years worth of "tank of the month" entries on the reefkeeper magazine, averaged them all, and set my tank to that figure.

The number I can up with was 79.5 degrees and 1.025

[Tang~Cop]

your saltanity is good.