Ceylon scared of bright lights in his new tank...

[puffergeek]

I have put my ceylon puffer in his new home, a 50 gallon, this weekend.

So my 6" ceylon (named Spaz because he's jumpy) moved from a 40 G with a wimpy 20W light to a 50 G with a fixture with two 96W PC lights (plus a skimmer, lots of LR, some macro-algae, a single mushroom coral on LR frag (to see how he does with them), and a few hermits).

He freaked out when the lights came on and smashed his lip on a rock... his lip was bleeding a tiny bit, but looks okay today. I even made sure there was lots of cover and a nice big cave, but he still did not like the change plus the bright lights... he hid on the bottom with clamped fins whenever the lights were on. Poor little guy!

I tried putting the old fixture from the 40 gallon on the 50 (both are acrylic and 36" long) but it looked like crap... 20W was just not enough to make this tank look good... but Spaz started to calm down.

So I broke out the debit card and picked up a 30" T5 fixture (2x18W, one 10k and one actinic) and with a little work, mounted it in the light box that came with the acrylic tank. It looks nice and provides enough light to see things but not enough to scare my psychotic puffer. He even ate normally tonight.

I tried putting the 192W fixture on the 40G to see what it looked like (my GSP moved in after the ceylon moved out). After hiding for a bit, the GSP was fine with the bright lights. Talk about different personalities!

That much light lit up the 40 _very_ nicely... but I worry about an algae explosion so I'm thinking of leaving the old 20W light on it for now. That would leave me with this 192W fixture in storage with my other unused tank stuff... maybe my GSP wouldn't mess with a few corals...

[RachelS]

I've a UK 50G tank (60 USG I believe) with 2 55W PC tubes on and the algae is horrendous (but easy enough to remove) - I only have them on for 4 hours a day and leave them off for 2 24 hour periods a week

Like you say, 192W on a 40G would be be severe overkill in terms of algae growth

[puffergeek]

Yeah... a single day had a bloom start! I'm planning on buying another T5 fixture (for 36 total watts) when I can afford it.