# Lighting a 55 gallon corner tank



## caronsd (Jul 5, 2011)

I was wondering is a single 65W 6700K compact flourescent light enough for a 24-30" deep aquarium? I do not plan on using only low light plants.


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## Dave-H (Jul 29, 2010)

Doubtful. Are you trying to light an Aqueon 54g corner bowfront??


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## caronsd (Jul 5, 2011)

yup thats the one.


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## Dave-H (Jul 29, 2010)

Welcome to my nightmare 

The 54g bowfront corner is an awesome tank, beautiful to look at, and overall a great choice. But it has some shortcomings:

1) no canopy available, you have to DIY if you want one
2) tricky to light, to say the least!
3) hard to get good circulation going, but this is fairly easy to overcome
4) really, really hard to photograph a full tank shot!

But, I love my 54g corner bow!

I have a 30 inch 2 x 31w T5HO on legs across the top. That's the 30 inch housing with the 27.5 inch bulbs rather than the 25 inch bulbs that usually comes with a 30 inch fixture. I can only find those bulbs from Coralife, but they are worth it because they are the only way I can get the far corners light up nicely. That gives me 30+ PAR at substrate.

You'll still have a dim area in the back. I have 2 LED strips going to light the back, and that works fairly well. 

If you can figure out how to get great photos of this tank, I'd love to know! Enjoy the corner tank, it's really great once it's grown in!


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## caronsd (Jul 5, 2011)

For circulation and filtration I'm using a sponge filter with a powerhead attached, great circulation and flow and it wont suck up any small things. can you send me a link to the light you use? My glass top allows me to fit a certain light size and thats what I'm going for. The back corner i'm not too worried about because I have some amazing pieces of drift wood I can stick back there.


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## Dave-H (Jul 29, 2010)

This is the light I'm using. If you don't put at least something to light the back, it could look pretty dim back there but give it a shot!

Are you saying you have a single sponge filter on a powerhead handling all filtration/circulation for the whole tank? Are you sure it's enough?


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## caronsd (Jul 5, 2011)

Yeah sponge filters are how I've always filtered my tanks, the can be relatively easily hidden, are inexpensive to run, work GREAT when combined with a powerhead vs air line suction and are silent. It'll suck in debris floating in the tank but small fish can easily swim away from it and since I have a lot of fry in there it works good. Circulation around the bowfront from the powerhead makes everything flow right back to the filter too and a great clean up grew of shrimp and fish do any remaining work.


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## caronsd (Jul 5, 2011)

Now I also have a 36" 10000k 96W light, but I was told the spectrum was too high is that true?


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## Dave-H (Jul 29, 2010)

Sounds good - how powerful is the powerhead in there? I'm running an Eheim 2336 and a Koriala Nano just to get enough circulation to get it to grow in thickly!


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## Dave-H (Jul 29, 2010)

caronsd said:


> Now I also have a 36" 10000k 96W light, but I was told the spectrum was too high is that true?


Now you are getting into more techy questions, so maybe someone smarter than me will chime in. But I have a 6700 and a 10k going and it's working great! I think it's common to use those 10k's in planted tanks, although 6700 is said to be the 'best' frequency.


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