Too Much Light

[overfishy]

I have a 110 gallon aquarium and i want to set it up as a mini reef and am working on a canapy for it. i am going to build the lighting into it and was wondering if there is such thing as too much light. i was thinking of 4 65w power compact white and 2 blue with 4 lunar bulbs is this too much will i kill my coral

 

[SkiFletch]

Using floursecent lighting, especially for a tank of that many gallons, it is tough to get too much light. Really the only way you can have too much is if you're throwing tons of metal halides on a small tank. For a 110 gallon tank, Id actually call that lighting plan conservative as opposed to outrageous. You might want to look into longer length higher capacity bulbs if you're going with PCs. Say 36 or 48" bulbs which I'm pretty sure are 96w and 118w respectively. I dont know how long your tank is, but probably significantly longer than 4'... Just for example, I have two 96w 3' PC lights on my 3' tank (45g) and I consider that on the low end of the sepctrum. Hope that helps

 

[crazyelece]

There is such a thing as too much light but your proposal doesn't meet it. "Too much" is basically not a definative term but if you had say 3 400W Mhs on a 55, low light coral such as mushrooms will melt away.

Also a 260W PC fixture isn't enough lighting for light loving coral such as SPS and clams. It will be enough for most softies and LPS though. I run a 260W PC fixture on my 4ft 120 gal with softies and LPS growing like mad.