Lighting Opinions

[J Feez]

Hi Everyone,

If there is one thing I don't have a good understanding of, it's sifting through all the endless options for lighting to get what I can afford and want at the same time.

Right now all I have is a 36" Coralife 42watt 10,000 K aqualight. As I'm sure you know, it really is the bare minimum.

I'm not really looking to be keeping the toughest corals out there, but I would like to, at the very least, keep the zoo's, star polyps, colt coral and my sebae as happy as they possibly can be.

I've been thinking about the compact flourescents. Are they a good bet?

Thanks everyone

[DanG]

I'd look at T5's over compact fluorescant's. They put out more light watt for watt.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by DanG

I'd look at T5's over compact fluorescant's. They put out more light watt for watt.

as a differnt opinion I would stay with your PC's as unless you find HO t5's then your PCs are putting out more than a NO T5. but even if you do find HOT5's is it worth the cost of upgrading for the tiny increase in output(less than 8%)?

befor I can recomend anything else how big is your tank in hight length and width?

Steve

[J Feez]

Hi Steve,

My tank is Approx: 36" W x 13" Deep x 18" H. I didn't realize that an upgrade to T5's would give me that little of an increase in output. What am I going to have to upgrade to, to see a large increase?

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by J Feez

Hi Steve,

My tank is Approx: 36" W x 13" Deep x 18" H. I didn't realize that an upgrade to T5's would give me that little of an increase in output. What am I going to have to upgrade to, to see a large increase?

Ok there are a lot of different opinions in an "increase" in light. no you are running 1 PC, so if you upgrade to say 4 T5's then you will get a little more light intensity but it will be more evenly balanced across the tank so it will look a lot brighter.

the only way to get a "Large" increase in usable light is to make the jump to MH as they are basically in a class of there own.

PC's T5's and VHO's are all in the same class of lighting. PC's are about 10% more output then VHO and T5's are a little more than PC's.

Some dumb info in case people didn't know a PC is actually a T4 bulb and inherently more intense than a T5, but because of the design not as much usable light makes it to the tank. So one day some one is going to design a single tube PC and start calling it a T4 and it will be the "next best and greatest" lighting product


anyhow with a 18" deep tank depending on the room you have under your hood you could through a couple of 175 watt MH in there (or 250's) or even 150HQI's and you will get a very large increase in your lighting, but from what you have said you want to keep you don't need that much light. sebae aside (as I have had a bubble tip but not that) everything will be happed under any lighting that has been mentioned above so the cheapest option would be to buy another PC tube or two) personally I would buy 1, 10000K PC and 1 actinic VHO and set them up so your VHO is in the middle, but having said that if it turns out your Sabae would like lots of light you could get away with one 250 watt MH in the middle and some actinic lighting of some sort, or if it doesn't need that much light and you can find a screaming deal on a T5 set up that will give you a minimum of 3 tubes (5 would be cool as you could do 10K actinic 10K actinic 10K) this is the benefit of T5, not that they are so much more powerfull, but rather because they are small you can stuff a lot under the hood.

hope this helps.

Steve

[TheReefGeek]

You could go with a single 14-20K 250w Single Ended Metal halide.

You could keep anything under it, and bulb replacement cost is cheap that way.

A SE bulb covers 2ft preferably, but a 250 will be plenty of light, just don't keep any high light corals on the end 6 inches. I ran a 20K XM 250w over my 36x18x18 tank for a while and it looked good. It did look better with a 10K supplimented with VHO actinics though.

[Reefer Rob]

I am in the process of swirching to T5 lighting for my 72g bowfront. With the right reflector they put out a ton of light. Do a search on Google for "iwan reef" to see what can be done with T5s.

[J Feez]

Thanks for the great answer Steve! that more than helps. You probably just tripled my knowledge about lights haha

Rory, what kind of price would I be looking at for that type of set up?

That's incredible what that guy has done with just T5's.