Lighting Issues

[alton]

Lighting levels can be deceiving. I noticed lately that my one of my Wesophylia in my 29g wasn’t looking so hot. After checking all the parameters, I decided to check the lighting level with my foot candle meter. New this fixture retro-fit was putting out 1,700 foot candles and now 8 months later at the water level was 1350 ftc. The biggest change was at the bottom of the tank was 13 to 15 ftc. When I changed the lamp the foot candles at the water level came back up to over 1500 but the biggest change came from the bottom which went up from 13 to 30 foot candles. And in a day my coral was fat and happy again. Hopefully this helps someone in the future when all else fails and you can’t figure out what’s wrong, to remember it’s time to change lamps.

[Polkster13]

Are you using Power Compacts? How are you measuring the FTC at the bottom of the tank? Are you testing through the glass?

I found when I was using Power Compact lamps that I needed to change out the bulbs every 6 months. My photo period was at least 10 hours.

[alton]

Power Compacts and through the glass. I am going to also keep up with my metal halides to see how long before they drop off. I guess I need to set up one of my tanks on T5HO's to see how long before they drop off.

[gjuarez]

you are talking to the right guy then, polkster sells them