llighting to strong for my 60 gal?

[Nimboli12]

Ok, I now have 2 bars attached to my canopy. I have (4) T5 lights and an LED strip for moon light @ night. Each light is 39 watts so thats a total of 156 watts on my fish 6 hrs a day.

I just went down to check on my tank & the temp was 78.

Do I only need 2 T5's for a total of 78 watts?

 

[little_fish]

No, you want 4-5 watts per gallon with t5 lighting. Keep all your bulbs

 

[Nimboli12]

But the lights are heting up the water too much.

 

[Bifferwine]

78 is fine for your tank's temp. Even low 80s is fine. You want to minimize temperature swings -- stable temperatures (within a couple degrees over a 24 hour period) are really more important than how high or how low they are.

 

[kbuser92]

Mine is a perfect 79.5 24/7 and I think that's perfect. Stability is more important than the numbers as long as it's within the "safe" range. 76-83 is probably good.

 

[Nimboli12]

Wow. Ok. I also introduced 2 frag little soft corals yesterday. One is bright yellow and the other is a lime green. The guy at the store said the name of the yellow was a "flower". So do corals need a little higher temp? It doesn't say the name of the corals on the receipt. I should have paid closer attention.

Are you all familiar with "Coral one Shot"? Its a little blue tube. I haven't used it yet. & didn't plan to until I spoke with all of you first. the directions for its use are at coralRx.com/oneshot.

 

[Bifferwine]

The temperatures we stated are fine for corals as well. I've never heard of a "flower" coral. There is a flower pot coral, and a flower anemone... But I'm not sure what corals you got. Post pictures of them, and we can ID them. I don't have any experience with Coral One Shot. From the webpage, it looks like it's a dip. Dipping any new corals is a good habit to get into -- it can prevent pests from getting introduced into your tank, and can also help corals get over the stress of moving from one tank to another. Many tank problems could have been prevented if people used stuff like Coral One Shot more often!