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Distribution of lighting

andy

Member
Joined
14 Sep 2007
Messages
261
Location
Lewes, East Sussex
Please bear with me whilst i try to explain this.

Let's say i have a 100 gallon tank. 4 x 2 x 2. Im looking to get 2.5 wpg so need 250w of lighting.

The lighting i have looked at is the T5 power compact 55w. It's 21" long per tube.

Now this will mean having approx 4 tubes.....2 one side and 2 the other. However, this will only give me 110 watts of lighting per side....1 wpg !!!!

If i had the same going through T5 or T8 tubes (42" long) it would be ok as they run the length of the tank.

Is my theory correct or flawed ?

Many thanks in advance

Andy
 
On a 100gallon tank you don't actually need that many wpg. There's a nifty little calculator doing the rounds somewhere which tells you watts amano uses vs gallons.
 
The WPG calculation is a very rough guide but is concerned about lighting over the whole tank.

Remember if you have half the lighting over half the side then it's only lighting half the volume, so 110W over 50g, not 100g!

Personally I've found compact T5s don't provide a good spread of light and think you might be better with standard T5s running the length of the tank.
 
Garuf said:
On a 100gallon tank you don't actually need that many wpg. There's a nifty little calculator doing the rounds somewhere which tells you watts amano uses vs gallons.

Reading the barrreport says to me that the Amano calculator is flawed as Tom's readings from some Amano tanks showed that the wattages of the lights used are for some reason a lot lower than expected Par wise!!! Not read through all of it but I wouldn't go by that calculator anymore ;)

http://www.barrreport.com/general-plant ... -knew.html

I would say 1-1.5WPG of T5 linear is plenty but I would choose the linears over the CFs everytime!!!

AC
 
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