more lighting questions

Ijust installed a sunpod with a 250 watt,14k bulb on my 44 gal. corner tank.Seems almost too bright.Is it posible to use a lower wattage bulb or would I also need to change the ballast? Also ,could another solution be a 250watt bulb with a higher kelvin rating like maybe 20k? Thanks in advance for any answers....need some shades!

 

well your only around 5wpg. more then enough for your purposes, however its not so bright that its to bright. i think your just not used to powerful reef lighting yet. it is normal to make the rest of the house look dim. the only real way to improve this is build a canopy around the light.

you can go to a 20k bulb, but you may like that even less because it will be extremely blue.

you cant put alower wattage bulb in the fixture with out changing the ballast.

edit: also remember you trying to replicate the sun energy to the limited extent thats we can resonable do

 

+1. I have 258 watts of light over my 40, and thats considered mid-upper range in all honesty. Not even approaching the high end of the scale. I wouldn't do a canopy, unless you plan on a chiller. a 250W MH with a canopy over a 44 gallon tank will cause major heat issues.

 

Be careful with those little lugnuts to screw on to hold the UV shield in place. One of mine snapped from the fixture when I was tightening it.

 

Thanks,for the help,maybe I and my fish just need to adjust,but I noticed on my last visit to lfs thier reef display tanks were not nearly as bright,they were using 20k bulbs +actinics.A possible fix for the broken stud might be to drill it out and epoxy a replacement bolt in place from the inside.