146 watts, on 29 Enough

Bmgrocks · #1 01/15/2007, 08:18 AM

Running 146 watts on a 29

36 watt Coralife T-5 aqualight 30"
has 18 watt Actinic and 18 watt 10,000k

Then I have Some Jebo fixture, Power Compact 24"
55 watt 10,000k and 55 watt Actinic

MisMatched sizes because the Jebo Was free.

That is some 5.1 watts per gallon, is that enough to keep soft corals, zoas, shrooms, leather, frogspawn, hammer??

How much flow do I need as well, My CSS 65 produces alot of flow on the left side of my tank,

plannin on adding a Maxi Jet 400, with the Hydroflow wave maker, would that be enough flow?

pink_floyd · #2 01/15/2007, 01:48 PM

Your lighting would be enough to keep softies and shrooms... I think when it comes to flow issues, you would like to maintain the same flow on both sides of your tank imo...

lvreefer · #3 01/15/2007, 02:49 PM

If the T5 has seperate reflectors you could get away with just that light. The hydroflow is a good idea, but you might need a larger power head with the flow that is reduced by it.

Bmgrocks · #4 01/19/2007, 05:49 PM

are their any beginner soft corals that you'd reccomend?

Mariner · #5 01/19/2007, 06:07 PM

I'd go with an MJ 1200, especially if you're using the Hydorflow. You really want flow equal to at least 20x the volume of your tank per hour, IMO. In your case that would be 580 gallons per hour. That's roughly the flow of 2 MJ 1200's.
I think that your lighting will be more than adequate for a softies/LPS tank.
The corals that you listed are all good beginner corals. Be advised though that frogspawn and hammer corals are large polyp stony corals [LPS] that use calcium and carbonates to build a hard base/skeleton. You'll need to add calcium and alk to your tank if you keep these.
hth,
Mariner

Bmgrocks · #6 01/19/2007, 07:01 PM

Would I be able to keep some LPS, I dose with Purple UP, which is nothing but liquid calcium carbonate, and iodine.

Mariner · #7 01/19/2007, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bmgrocks
Would I be able to keep some LPS, I dose with Purple UP, which is nothing but liquid calcium carbonate, and iodine.

Possibly. Eventually you'd need to start testing for calcium and alkalinity and dosing something better than Purple up to keep levels where they need to be. As for tests, I'd recommend the Salifert calcium test, and any simple KH test for alk (Aquarium Pharm. makes a cheap one that's sufficient).
I don't want to overwhelm you at this point, but I'd highly recommend reading up on dripping Kalkwasser and other supplementation approaches in this article. Check out the other articles over in the Reef Chemistry forum on this, and ask Randy Holmes-Farley if you have any questions.
hth,
Mariner