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I recently set up my tank, and now that I'm looking at corals, I can't figure out just how much light I have. It's a 30 inch tall tank that's 2 feet wide. I have two 250 watt 14k metal halides and two 24 watt pc actinic fixture that's hanging about 8 inches above the water level. 

I keep looking at liveaquaria and I can't figure out what it means when it says this coral needs high light, moderate light etc. Do I have enough?

You add all the watts together and then divide by the gallons of water in your tank. You want around 3-5 watts per gallon. If I remember correctly.

a more accurate way is to measure the PAR at different spots in you tank. You can borrow a PAR meter from our wamas members. 

thing is, it won't work this way. The light only covers 2/3 of the tank, the aquascape is also only that 2/3 of the tank with the other 1/3 being my future project. It's a 220 gallon tank, and if I do the basic math, 550 watts of light sounds pretty low, at 2.5 watts per gallon. If I take only 2/3 of the length of the tank and calculate as if it was a 48" instead of 72" it comes out to 4 watts per gallon.

 

But that's 4 watts per gallon on the bottom of the tank

 

The problem is this, 

 

If I place a coral high up on the rock work, it will be less than 8 inches from top of the water. Should I then calculate the light as if the tank was only 8" deep? If I do that, then it will be 48"x24"x8" which is 40 gallons. Then the light is 13.75 watts at that level. 

 

Am I crazy, or is this correct?

a more accurate way is to measure the PAR at different spots in you tank. You can borrow a PAR meter from our wamas members. 

I might have to go into that section and try to do that. I was just hoping to have a basic idea, like: hey, you have enough light for medium to high light coral to grow and be fat and happy, or something similar response ..  :unsure:

What are the dimensions of the tank, L x W x H. What type of reflectors?

The tank is 72"x30"x24"

 

I'm not sure about the reflectors. The light is an older aquaspacelight.

 

The picture kinda shows what I mean about it only being over one side.

 

Posted Image

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nice aquascape!

 

Three 250w MH are plenty for that tank.  You can grow anything you want over the section with two MH.

Awesome. In that case, the shopping is going to start soon! Thanks :D

 

Nice aquascape!

Thanks! It's a little different now, the picture is pretty old. I actually just stacked the rocks and it turned out that way. Probably took 5 minutes. Didn't help that I was doing it with water already in the tank...

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