Montipora And Pc

[Crazy fishes]

Just a quick question about montipora, is 72 watt PC enough for them?

Regards

 

[jeasko]

personally i wouldnt risk it most hard corals really need alot of light and calcium, pc lighting wont penetrate the water enough IMO for montipora

 

[SkiFletch]

Again, using watts to measure light is not a good practice. That being said, I assume you're 72watts of light is a 2x36watt PC fixture. And since I know you have a smaller tank which is very shallow (aka short), I'd say a montipora capricornis could survive. Monti caps need very little comparative light, other montipora (digitate and encrusting varieties) require significantly more light. a monti cap would need trimming, but could be a good addition to your tank

 

[Crazy fishes]

Ski, How do you know what the PAR is at a given depth, spot etc in the tank. Is there a equation to calculate this or is there a detector?? I am interested in how do people know what light will be right for a given coral in a given environment. OR is it just guess work and experience??

Regards

 

[SkiFletch]

Unfortunately, the only way to really KNOW is with a PAR meter. We're trying to come up with some good anecdotal information within my local club regarding what lights give what PAR, but it's hard passing around a single meter between a few hundred members over a many hundred square mile area. This alas takes time. I wish it were simpler, but us hobbiests have our work cut out for us when it comes to truly measuring light output. PAR meters are not exactly cheap...

 

[jeasko]

i stand corrected! thanks for clearing that one up Ski learn something new every day

 

[Crazy fishes]

Ski, could you not use a lux meter? These measure light intensity per surface area if I remember right? They could be a surrogate marker and the meters are considerably cheaper.

Regards

 

[SkiFletch]

Alas, while lux meters can give you an "idea" of how strong your light is. But because they count ALL wavelengths of visible light, including some not-so-visible radiation, they really don't give you an idea of how good the light is for photosynthetic organisms. You could have a tube with a bigtime spike in the red or yellow radiation spectrum (which zooxanthellae rarely, if ever use), and your lux meter would read a lot of light. However, your corals would not grow quickly and may even suffer under such conditions of high lux and low PAR.

You could take a lux meter and put it underneath the big high-bay T5 fixtures we have at my lab which light an enormous warehouse-like space, and you'd probably see tremendous lux. Put a PAR meter under those same lights, and you probably wouldn't be all that wowed by what they put out.