Lighting help

[Simrdguy]

Hey, my buddy set me up with this tank before I moved, and I never asked him about the lighting, there are two bulbs one about 18" one about 24" the longer is a blue/white bulb and the shorter is all blue, was wondering if this is enough light for most corals or if I should upgrade to something else.

24" (Blue and White)
55 watt
W.7100k & B.12000k

18" (Blue)
Powercompact 36 watt
460nm Blue
twin tube 2G11 base

What kinda of bulbs are these, are they sufficent? I have a 29 tall tank. If I need to switch over what should I get?

[drock59]

those are power compacts, PC. They look fairly old so i ask do you have any idea the age? IM no expert on PC but I will give you my opinion. I think they are terrible. i would take Metal Halide, VHO or T5 over them any day of the weak.

[Simrdguy]

Dont you get a lot of heat out of metal halide? Doesnt help when it gets 100 here during the day... most of the summer... plus its not a very big tank... do I need that... I think they only look old cause I havnt cleaned them... and we used ungalvanized screws and brackets

[drock59]

i didnt say that you needed halides but i said it was a better option than PC. I think T5 and VHO are better lights than pc also. Any light you get is going to put off heat. therefore many people by fans or chillers. It usually isnt much of an issue if you have lots of air blown on the surface of the water. Evaportion tends to increase, but it keeps it cool. In 100 degree weather you should have a chiller with no exceptions.

[Simrdguy]

Yeah but you forget Im a cheap ***... Ill just dump some ice from the ice maker in there...

[drock59]

probably better to freeze some two liter bottles and float them... it will last longer and its reusable. Not to mention that is works. ALso, that is fine if you are cheap, like me, but that doesnt mean you are restricted to PC. I got my vhos for less than a 100 bucks total.

[Simrdguy]

Can I use the same ballast? and Ive hear of running some at night and some durring the day... do you do this? My ballast is a work horse 5? *Shrugs... Btw I bought my sand the other day... and am making plans for a refugium, just have to wait for a paycheck.. they stiffed me the other week.

[drock59]

im not positive on the ballast. i know WH is a decent ballast and will run VHO's but im not sure how many watts or length of bulb.
What are your plans for the fuge???
I dont know what you mean by running the lights at night. i run my actinics from 9-10 and my halides for five hours in the middle of the actinic time. i then turn on my fuge light when i turn off teh actinics.

[Simrdguy]

well the desigin in genral of my sump is poor... rember the skimmer I had to buy for its shortness, the sump that is in there is angled to allow easy acess I guess... but it makes it so shallow there is hardly and extra room for overflow... or a decent skimmer... I get about 8in depts... so the new one will be tall, im not really worried about bubbles in all that so its just pretty simple... a drip plate over bio balls the set above and the lenght of the 'fuge' (lol I like that) then out to a compartment on the right for my skimmer heater carbon and pump... though I could probally do with out the filter media at all.. cause my over flow box goes from top to bottom of the tank... trapazoidal area of 217 filled with bio balls... and filter pad on the top to keep things out... I decided to go with it cause I cleaned my sump today... and four months of food setteled on the bottom is not a pretty sight... plus I love that grape calerpa stuff... in my old tank I put it in and it took over, it was cool but almost too much..

[drock59]

ok so you should not be using bio balls unless you have and want to stay with a FOWLR. IF not, your live rock should be doing the biological filtration for you. Therefore, i would take them out slowly over a month to give your system time to catch up.
Also, I would think about going more with Chaetomorpha instead of grape caluerpa. Just my opinion.

[Simrdguy]

YOur live rock does ALL of your filtering?

[drock59]

yep

[drock59]

i have a fluval canister filter that i run carbon and phosgaurd thru, but for filtration i dont have any mechanical, except my skimmer. I run about 2000 Gallons per hours through my tank to keep everything moving. I think you should do a post in one of the main forums on what kind of filtration you should use and see what kind of response you get.

[drock59]

any updates on the tank???

[Simrdguy]

Awww... look how cute... ! lol what happend to you playing foot ball? Anyways actually yes... the star fish passed... obviously... so we replaced him with a lobster. Switched out the deep sand bed of crushed coral to sand, which was a process... one of my damsels hurt his eye and it got infected so I dowsed it with tetracycline... so now the water is blood red... lol party time I think. but thats about it. Gonna get a new ballast and light kid on ebay as soon as I sell some more stuff. Oh and speaking of lights... I saw those "moon light" simulators... which IM sure do absolutly nothing... but the look really cool at night, I just used two hyper led's from work that we use for car alarms, wasnt about to spend $50 for one.