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Light calculator for Newbies --your opinion please?

925 Views 3 Replies 3 Participants Last post by  Hoppy, 
S
I have been reading a lot and I found this calculator link from another forum.

http://www.petfish.net/calculators/utankcalc.php
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Trickerie
We don't usually use watts anymore to determine what type of lighting we will use. This is because watts is a unit of electricity, not of light. The amount of watts used by different types of bulbs does not reflect their lighting capacity. Its best to simply read the PAR vs Distance thread in the lighting forum and take in all that information. You will thank me later :)
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S
Trickerie said:
We don't usually use watts anymore to determine what type of lighting we will use. This is because watts is a unit of electricity, not of light. The amount of watts used by different types of bulbs does not reflect their lighting capacity. Its best to simply read the PAR vs Distance thread in the lighting forum and take in all that information. You will thank me later :)
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Okay.

* groggy from lack of sleep induced by Olympics *
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H
I entered the dimensions for a standard 55 gallon tank in that calculator. It told me I needed more than 80 watts of lighting, presumably LED lights, or maybe T5HO lights with no reflectors, or posssibly T5 lights with very good reflectors, or perhaps T8 shop lights, or T8 shop lights with very good reflectors, or what? That is why it is of no value.
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