Re: frag swap

Well this is all that my wife can think about. She is looking forward to this event. My pink birdsnest with purple ployps should be a good on to frag,just have to find out how to without wreckin it. Want to make a frag tank, anyone have an idea on lighting. Should I go with a halide or T5. Do you need a skimmer in a frag tank? Any help would be greatly apprieciated.

I am going to be making a frag tank as well. I did set one up for a while. I did some checking and found it was kind of a mix between skimmer of not. So said if you do weekly,bi-weekly water changes you would not need a skimmer and others say it is a must so I guess it is up to you on that one. Also if you are going to have any fish in there to.

As for lighting if you have to buy a light I would say T-5's would work out just fine. Most frag tanks are going to be 12" deep or less. How big is your tank going to be?

Hope I was some help

Brad, we may be selling our T5's. There's actually a very slim chance right now but if we do, I'll let you know. That's what we have on the 75 now.

I think it's like the nano tanks, if you do weekly water changes and have very little bio-load, as in no fish, you would be OK w/out skimmer. Skimmers really just let you get by longer w/out water changes. Another thing to consider, are you going to keep the frag tank going after the swap?

hey Garrett, would that light like you have on your nano be enough for a frag tank, 10 gal like yours.

If you were just going to make a 10g frag tank that should be fine. It is 96w so that would be 9.6 watts per gallon and IMO you could keep anything in there. well almost anything.

Too bad you didn't start your 10 gall in time for the nano build!

Make sure to post pics of the build!

found an 18" T5 light on marine depot. I am going with that I think.

How many watts is it?

36 total watts. If that is not enough I could just use 2 of them.

How much are they? I owuld at least get 3. well Iguess it all depends what you want to keep in there too.

they are 59 and have 2 18 w bulbs. with 2 i could have sps frags, it is only a 10 g tank.

If you are going to get 2 why not just get the 20" coralife fixture that is 96 watts

http://www.bluezooaquatics.com/productdetailas.asp?did=5&pid=2008&cid=108

It would be cheaper and you would get more light IMO.

Just a thought

with pc lights you could only do softies. With these T5s i think I could do LPS and SPS as well or am I wrong. It would be nice to have a mh but they cost much more and bulb life is shorter. Let me know if I am going about this the wrong way. With how I have dis figured so far I would have 7.2w per gal if I went with 2 of those lights. i will not have a skimmer, just do weekly water changes. There will not be any fish in there so the bio load will be down. Do I have to put some live rock in there too?

I am pretty sure you could keep SPS in there with 9.6 watts per gallon. I guess I have not heard that you can't keep sps with pc's I think it is how strong(watts per gallon) you have. But I could be wrong as well???LOL Maybe Vishnu or one of the others will chime in on this one!!

t5s last twice as long as pcs and if i were going to do sps i would go t5. People say you can only really grow softies under pcs.

I think theres a lot of stuff that goes into the overall equation. Watts per gallon is kindof an odd thing cause it doesnt take into account things like water depth etc. But I feel like Home_Depot is right. If i can grow a nice frogspawn 18" down with 5w per gallon of PC, i think that 9.6w per gallon at 12" or less would be ok.

That being said, a lot of people like t5s for reasons like power consumption, longevity, etc. Personally I have MH and PC.

Watts by the way is a measurement of how much power the consume, not how much light they output, so a really ineficient bulb could have a high wattage and low crappy light so watts dont really mean to much regardless. My .02 if its worth even that.

well what about spectrum of the bulbs. That is where this gets tricky. Is what quality of light you are providing for a coral to grow. Softies have a much easier exosceleton and dont require those special spectrums of bulbs. Even like how you can grow coral under a 10 k better than a 20k but people like the color of 20k.