3 weeks in and cleaning the screen about every 3-4 days as I keep getting red stuff. There is a little bit of green hair, but I mean a little. Should I keep on with this for a few more weeks or upgrade lighting (little reluctant given cost of nearly 20 GBP each).
Am using 2 x 45W cfl with reflector on an oversized screen of 12" and 12" and flow of 60lph per 1cm
Not enough light. You are losing half the light to the sides. And with 144 square inches of screen, and only 86 total watts to start with, it's easy to see why the screen is staying dark.
Try to get reflectors on the sides.
And cut the screen vertically so it's only 8" wide, and tape off the rest.
He does have reflectors. Just not enough light for the screen area.
How much is feeding?
I have wing reflectors behind each cfl, and one at the side (not pictured).
I'm having difficulty working out feed vs siing guidelines.
Generally I feed a large pich of flake in the morning (20mm length, 3mm thick)
In the evening worst case is 1 defrosted frozen cube of mysis + 1 small prawn + 1/4 mussell + sea veggies dried seaweed (40mm x 40mm)
If I reduce the effective size of the screen down by "taping off", any view on what tape is reef save and also won't fall off with water?
I can replace the cfl (currently 2 x 45w) with either 65w, 85w, 105w or 125w.
Should I increase lighting (if so, which size) until display tank loses all the hair algae and then down size?
Hmmm.... When you say "45W", is that the actual power used or what the package says as "equivalent Watts"? You want to use the actual watts of the lights in your calculations, not the "equivalent". So a 23 Watt CFL (actual Watts) might say on the package "Equivalent to 65 watts".
Yes, I understand the logic and I do mean 2 x 45w of actual power, NOT equivalanet.
So I know its likely I need more power, but how much more? These things are relatively expensive so I don't want to get 2 x 125w and find out they're burning. Equally I don;t want to get 2 x 85w and realise they're still not strong enough....
Views?
Newer knew they make that powerfull CFL's. What spectrum they are ? Do you know?
We need warm whites with maximum possible red spectrum for srubber.
A 12 x 12 is huge by modern standards, so be sure you need that much screen for how much you feed. That would be 12 cubes a day. I'd be inclined to trim the screen down to 6-8" wide and wrap the reflectors around so that most all the light is getting focused on the screen. Cutting the screen in half and focusing the light would have the same effect as doubling the wattage. You could try the plumbers silicon thread tape to wrap the pipe and close down the slot. It doesn't have adhesive, but would hold if you wrap it around several times.
http://www.1000bulbs.com/product/8374/FC150-35862.htmlOriginally Posted by kotlec
Like 6 24" T5HO folded in half.
125w description appears it to be the same size as the 65w. This is the 2700k version:
http://www.green-lamp.co.uk/shop/art...26aid%3D106%26
The main issue I have with the sizing guidelines is that if you feed anything else other than "cubes" then there's no certainity about required size, is there? I feed a varied diet to my fish so really struggle to understand what size I need.
I originally used a 4" wide by 12" long screen and had the same results as I'm seeing now so am a bit lost!
I'm not sure what you're using for reflectors but proper plant growing reflectors seems to be fixed in shape. I've trimmed it to fit in the sump but its not flexible.
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