Soooo confused about sw lighting

[discus4everGrl]

I have fw tanks - four to be exact - and in the beginning I did lots of reading and got a 55 heavily planted tank. All the info was there as far as lighting.

Now I am in the mental planning process for a sw tank. I have several books and none of them go into great detail on lighting. For fw there are specific books on growing plants which goes into detail on lighting requirements.

How much is enough lighting for sw? Do I need the atinic blue lights for live rock? How much lighting is required for a 30 gallon and a 10 gallon for soft corals? How much do I need on my 30 if I want an anemone? I have 65watts on the 30 in flouresent compacts for plants (fw tank at the moment), do I need to change that bulb to a 50/50 or can I just add another light with so many (# of watts) of acintic blue? Please help me understand the lighting requirements for FOWLR and later on if I want corals or anenomes.

 

[1979camaro]

How much is enough lighting for sw?

this is a tricky question to answer because of the large number of options as far as tank inhabitantss

for FOWLR you just need a standard flourescent bulb or two. i would get one 10000k and one actinic blue and go with that

for soft corals in a ten you will probably need a PC setup of some sort...probably one 65w 50/50 bulb will be enough but if you really want growth i would look for something which has one 10000k bulb of 55 or 65w and an actinic bulb of 55 or 65w. for a 30 with soft corals i would probably look for a similar setup.

in my opinion a 30g tank is too small for an anemone, but if you were going to go that route i think PC will still work for you, but a fixture with 2x36w 10000k and 2x36w actinic is probably in order

 

[discus4everGrl]

Ok.... so on my 30 gallon I should remove the 65watt 6500K bulb and get a 10,000K (as I understand it from fw experience, 10,000K is higher in the blue light spectrum anyways) and then get an additional compact with either actinic blue or 50/50 bulbs?

 

[discus4everGrl]

oh yeah forgot - would it be ok to leave my 65watt flourescent compact which is in the 6500K range on the 30 for live rock and fish for now then add the additional lighting before I dive into corals and such?

 

[KahluaZzZ]

why not...more light..good

 

[Shipley18]

as long as we are on the light i read fo rher 30 gallon you suggested like 200 Watts of lighting.... i have110W on my 20 galloon..... is that not enough..could tha tbe the reason my corals grow so slowly?

 

[aresgod]

its not really about the # of watts, the spectrum and intensity of light is way more important.

 

[discus4everGrl]

so by spectrum you mean in the blue range and by intensity you mean the Kelvins?

 

[Trigger]

A 130 watt pc would do you just fine on a 30gl tank.

 

[dbacksrat]

i have 130 watts of PC (Orbit PC fixture w/ moonlights) over my 29 gallon reef--everything is good so far (coralwise)

 

[S.Reef]

Spectrum is the kelvin rating...kelvin ratings of abuot 12000k can give off a nice blue. Intensity means like the typue of lighting...metal halide is more intense then regular fuorescent.