Can you light a 3' tank with one MH bulb?

[Anonymous]

I'm looking at combination MH/T5 fixtures at the moment to see if I was wrong to assume they are too expensive to buy (instead of a couple of mini-pendants). Most of the 3' fixtures seem to have only one HQI bulb though. I was planning to light a 3' tank with two mini-pendants. Could one bulb be enough? I'd assume you'd get dark spots at each end...

 

[Anonymous]

So you get dimmer spots on the left & right side.
Put low light corals there.

 

[Anonymous]

What Magilla said.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys.

BTW, sorry to all sumpziens. I don't know what I was doing (actually, I know what happened, it's the damn Top Sites function on Safari - I thought it was taking me to the GRF :x ).

Len, if you want to move this topside, feel free.

 

[Anonymous]

I did it on a 4' tank for years, it kinda works, some vho to fill makes it pretty good

 

[Anonymous]

Yes, but you will have 6 inches on either side you should not put things. If it will be a standard viewing tank then you generally don't have things much closer to the sides than that anyway.

 

[Anonymous]

Dunno about HQI's, but I grew all high light stony corals in 3 x 3 tanks lit by single 400 watt single-end bulbs (Iwasakis)

 

[Anonymous]

I have a single lumenarc mini pendant with a 175w bulb on my 32" wide tank.. not quite 36" but it's pretty much got complete coverage. It's all about the reflector.

 

[Anonymous]

It depends on the coral but they often benefit from raising the fixture on a 3' tank. 3' tanks are often fairly shallow and raising the fixture gives a bigger spread.

 

[Anonymous]

sorry to all sumpziens.

Seriously dude. My reefaholia is currently in remission and I'd like to keep it that way. Last week I went to Atlantis aquarium and that was a trial also. Interestingly, it wasn't the incredible 10,000 gallon reef, but the cold water seaweed tank that got to me...

 

[Anonymous]

Seriously dude. My reefaholia is currently in remission and I'd like to keep it that way. Last week I went to Atlantis aquarium and that was a trial also. Interestingly, it wasn't the incredible 10,000 gallon reef, but the cold water seaweed tank that got to me...

 

[Anonymous]

sorry to all sumpziens.

Seriously dude. My reefaholia is currently in remission and I'd like to keep it that way. Last week I went to Atlantis aquarium and that was a trial also. Interestingly, it wasn't the incredible 10,000 gallon reef, but the cold water seaweed tank that got to me...

20,000 gallons actually. I was just there too...pretty insane!

 

[Anonymous]

I'm looking at combination MH/T5 fixtures at the moment to see if I was wrong to assume they are too expensive to buy (instead of a couple of mini-pendants). Most of the 3' fixtures seem to have only one HQI bulb though. I was planning to light a 3' tank with two mini-pendants. Could one bulb be enough? I'd assume you'd get dark spots at each end...

I don't think there will be dark spots so much as "lower light spots". Light doesn't know about the magical dividing line that occurs at 24" width on a tank bottom located an arbitrary distance away from a bulb. Of course if you have a shallow tank with the light close to the surface you'll see a very narrow focused spot, and if your tank is tall and/or you have the light located a consdierable distance away from the surface it will spread quite a bit.

In short, slap it on there and find out. You may like the way it looks, and it may create less algae on the glass for you to scrape. PAR meters come in handy for these occasions...

 

[Anonymous]

Hey, there's Joe Yauliio, or however you spell his name. We both went to the same college; I saw him last week. He's a good guy. And he has a bunch of fat tangs.

 

[Anonymous]

What's really cool on that tank is if you can stay after they shut off all the lights, a school of flashlight fish comes out.

Sorry for the hijack Tom.

 

[Anonymous]

I spell it Wyoolow.

You saw the flashlight fish! That's super awesome and I'm jealous. Being the old man that I am I left around 4 pm so I could drive back to Manhattan and take a nap.

 

[Anonymous]

I love hijacking threads. Hey Tom, screw you!

Here is a picture of Joe where he's wearing my work jacket. I wanted to send it to Charles from my boss' account with the caption: "We've decided to go in a more East Coast direction with our staff. Pack up your **** by the end of the day." Haw!

 

[Anonymous]

Hijacking's no sin. Exposing the eyes of Sumpizen's to the bright light of reef talk was though, for which I apologise.

Heh. I guess I'm worrying about nothing. Given I'm also going to want to go for a LPS/Rics/Zoas style tank anyway (see other thread), some dimmer areas might be a good idea. It's just that I've seen lots of pictures of tanks which are surprisingly dark at the edges and I really didn't want that...

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Matt- does any other public aquarium have a large reef that compares favorably with that one?

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Matt- does any other public aquarium have a large reef that compares favorably with that one?

Not really. Waikiki has coral growth like that but it's only 5k IIRC. There are 4 far larger ones spread out around the world that I'm aware of but none of them show coral growth quite like his. Joe has done an amazing job on that tank.

The bigger they are the more of a PITA they are to steer in the right direction, like my man Biggie used to say: "Mo' gallons, mo' problems." I think Joe has said that it took 3 years before Acropora would grow well in there. We're probably headed somewhere around the same timeline.

Below is a photo from the coral tank at Burger's Zoo in Arnhem...(I think) somewhere around 200k. Very big corals!