Lighting and circulation for SPS

[eddtango]

The tank is 6 ft long and 22" high. How much lighting is required for SPS? Will a AQUALIGHT PRO w/ 150 MH do the work? What's the best pump for an SPS tank?

[niloc16]

i would suggest 250w for your tank being 22". tunzes are really good pumps for flow.

[marie]

"sps" covers a huge number of corals with different light requirements, you could probably have some types like montiporas higher up in the tank under 150w metal halides but 250w would be much better

[BCOrchidGuy]

As has already been said, it really depends on what kind of SPS you want to keep. Some have extremely high light demands, while others have a lower light demand. Are you looking at shallow water species or deep water species. Most SPS like lots and lots of water flow, Tunze are nice (I hear) Seio's are affordable and work well but they don't do well on wave makers, Seio does have it's own controller out now though so maybe they will work better on those. You may want to consider a homemade canopy with 4 foot long fluorescents that overlap at the center of the tank, IE put 4 fluorescents in the canopy, with each one in the outside corner of the canopy, that way they'll overlap the center and give you full coverage. On top of that 3 MH's of 250watts each would be nice, but two 250s about a food away from each end and a 400watt in the middle would be very nice. 250 watt HQI's are very nice lights and provide lots of light.

As far as water movement, the old saying of 10x your tank volume is just plain inadequate. Most people have 30x or more their tank volume for flow. Myself I have nearly 2600 GPH of flow on a 60 gallon cube, my Xenia, my mushrooms, my BTA all tolerate it just fine.

Doug

[Scavenger]

Great suggestions so far. I can only offer that I was trying to grow various SPS in my 20" deep 110 gallon using 2 175 watt halides and a flow rate of about 15X. I had slow growing brown sticks without much polyp extention. My LPS and softies were thriving though.

Last week and over the weekend, I upgraded to 2 250 watts halides and a 60X flow rate by adding 2 seio 2600's. Already I have great polyp extension and see some colors starting to develop. I reaquascaped to create calmer nooks and crannys for the softies and LPS. All my corals are responding great so far. The next few weeks will hopefully hold many pleasant surprises for me.

[marie]

To keep the record straight . It all depends on what sps you want to grow. Here is a pic of my old 75g with 4 vhos, no sump, prism pro skimmer, and 3 maxi jet 1200's



as you can see they are mostly montiporas but i also had a birdsnest and others that did very well. So it comes down to whether you want to spend the money to upgrade or work with what you've got

[kwirky]

An alternative that can cost less than an aqualight pro fixture would be two 36" Tek fixtures from sunlight supply. Might even be higher quality build, too, and definately much more light output than 150w's. May even be equal to 250's, or even more powerful...

I don't know, but those aqualight pro fixtures seem a little overpriced to me, especially since I've heard various people complain about the quality of the included MH bulbs.

[eddtango]

I'm getting an Aqualight PRO 250s and ff the recommendation of Anthony (Sea Horse Fanatic),I'll be changing the bulbs to Geisemann 13000k.
I'm also planning to use a Tunze Wavebox or put WAVY Seas on the return. I hope this will be adequate for circulation and lighting.