Hello everyone

[fishbait]

i have a lot of personal debate over the wattage per gallon rule of thumb. no doubt it has it's merits. i have this debate because wattage is the amount of energy the bulb consumes, not necassarily the brightness. for instance a 35 watt pc bulb for your'e home emits the same amount of light as a 75 watt incandescent. and a t-5 bulb emits more light than the comparible wattage p.c. personally for me it's hard to decide just what is enough light. no longer than i have been in the hobby i have seen several instances where the wattage per gallon theory has been blown out of the water. one is instance for example is the guy at my lfs has a 75 gallon display. he only has the 230 watt coralife pc fixture. he has had a ruby bubble tip anemone in it for three years (since he set the tank up) and it is huge! it has spit three times. and it's clones are actually still living in the tank too. so for me that kinda blows the 10 watts per gallon rule out of the water. maybe he's just lucky? i personally kept a condi anemone in my tank for the first 4 months ( i know that's not very long) but he did grow tremendously in my tank. i just took him out because he was too aggressive. maybe i should have started a new post for my thoughts on this to keep from causing any confusion. but we were on the subject so i thought what the heck.

 

[yote]

Joe.
I have a Bubble Tip Anemone in my 55 with 432 watts of T-5 over it.Its been in there since April and is doing great.
I only have a little over 6 watts per gallon.
I'm with Fish,watts refers to the ammont of electricty being used.

 

[jhnrb]

There is surely more to it than watts per gal. such as, depth of water collum, color of substrait, intensity, par/spectrum combo, etc. All that you need to do in the short term is to observe the light the coral is comming from or research where it was grown out at, and see if your system provides the correct environment for the new member, or, if you have a coral that can adjust to your lighting regime. good luck and dont get too frazzled over this watts per gal, but, do pay attention to the spectrum and intensity/depth of the water collum. Go slow and try a small frag, if it does well you can continue, if not, you need to assess where you want to go with the lighting if the problem is the lighting. keep us posted and ask any questions you may have. you will find various opinions here and remember that there are no hard fast rules here, but, there are some sensible guidelines to consider. good luck and thanks for the question.

 

[LionFish]

jhnrb
Thanks So far you have all helped alot ! hell, I got my wife to let me spring for the new Light:D

I will quit Posting in this thread now as It has grown Too quick any other questions I have will be directed to the correct sub forum.

Thanks Again :Cheers: