Overview:
My nano-reef aquarium consists of a custom made lighting fixture I designed myself. The 3 27W Power Compact light bulbs and ballasts come from Lights of America and for the price, is the best lighting available for reefs. There was always a general rule of thumb and a common misconception about the type and amount of lighting required for a reef aquarium. The amount and quantity of lighting is all determined by the types of animanls desired to keep in the aquarium. The common misoconception is that there is a formula that will determine the proper lighting based on aquarium size. But, this is very innacurate because of the different types of lighting available e.g. Normal Output (N.O.), High Output (H.O.), Very High Out (V.H.O.), Power Compacts (P.C.) , and Metal Halide Lighting (H.Q.I). Each of these lighting usages similar volts but the wattage is different for all of them. For example, let's say that a Normal Output lamp and a Very High Output lamp both put out 100 Watts of power, but when you measure how brigh they are, the results are quite different. The V.H.O. lamp will produce many more lumesns then the N.O. whether they are at the same wattage. This makes it very inncurate for a formaula to be surmised based on watter/gallon. Point being, a formula based on how many watts of light available per gallon in one's tank is innapropriate and invalid. Another example is the usage of Power Compact lighting. P.C.'s were made to be much more energy efficient then regular light bulbs; meaning, a P.C. light outputs much less ligh then it would normally take. The key advantage of Power Compact lighting is that they input very little amount of power (W) and output a great amount of light. In my case, i use 3 27 Watt P.C. lights which, by any means because 27 watts of power is very little for reef to keep corls. The conversion rate is this: each 27W light is equivolant to a 125 Watt regular light bulb. The total P.C. wattage input in the tank is (27W*3) = 81 Watts, while the regular output is (125W*3) = 375 Watts. Here are the light bulbs' specifications that came with the lighting fixtures:
Lighting System Specifications: