Any FTS? I want to see this toe-kick thing.
Pods will come back... hang in there. They always do. And snails, well, you can always get more snails (as if you really needed a reason to keep visiting the LFS's and ordering stuff MO, right?
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As for your lighting .. I'm guessing this won't be for a 28g.
I'm not sure what size you were thinking for the tank? That may influence your choice of reflector (or the "1 vs 2" argument). 1 may be less energy+heat than 2, but the flip side is you can probably get away with smaller wattages if you went with 2. Ie., instead of a single 400, you could go 2x250. Or even 2x175 if the tank was not very deep. Technially 2x250 > 400 but only by 100W, that's not that's terrible.
I dunno. There are so many choices when it comes to lighting it gets overwhelming to sift through it all sometimes.
One thought though: I'd probably consider T5's over PC's. The lamp replacement cost alone trumps that one. I've been wanting to switch to T5's for my FW tank for ages (my last PC holdout) because it's a question of $20 lamps versus $40 lamps.
Seems the cost to get into T5 initially is more but the long-term costs, I think, are less. Anyhow just a thought. Plus I'm not real sure about the PC actinics, a lot of them just seem like blue lights to me. I'm sure there are "real actinics" out there but .. definitely some that aren't.