The age old question of lights...lol (1 Viewer)

[haze_9]

Ok I just bought a 72 gallon bow front and I am planning on setting it up and getting it running over the holiday. Once it is fully ready I plan on transferring everything from my 55 gallon to it. Currently on my 55 glaaon reef tank I am only running a 36' coralife PC light. and that tank is doing good but my corals are growing VERY slowly. Soooo I want to set it up right in my new tank.

Now I know the first question you are going to ask is what am I going to keep in my tank. Well in being fairly new to the hobbie I have been patint and I am not going to fool my self into thinking I can keep a clam now or anything. Sooo I guess right now it is zoos and Frogspawn and other softies but I want to start branching into other things too.

Now I am not rich and I can't spend 300.00 on a lighting system. I am fairly good at learning wiring and ect so I might try to DIY something but even after reading tons of stuff online I have no idea what type and watt lights I need to be looking for. MH, VHO, ect ect ect My mind is doing circles.

Any help is much appreciated.

Dixie

 

[boogaman]

I know you said you don't have alot of money to spend, but I think you should get what you want the first time. Save your money.
I went to ebay and bought three coralvue 250 watts MH kits. You can pick the kelvin of the bulb you want at check out.
I also like the looks of the t5's people are using these days. Less heat added with these, and that's a pluss due to the heat in the summer time.
I also said the same thing about just wanting to do softies when I first started, but now it seems that all I want is sps's. So with that being said I am glad I went with the MH's.


Gavin
http://cgi.ebay.com/CORALVUE-250-wa...ryZ46314QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

 

[haze_9]

Also in my search I found this. can this be used? And then I just buy a ballast and stuff?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...1824&_trksid=p3907.m32&_trkparms=tab=Watching

 

[boogaman]

Yes you can use that, but by the time you buy all the other pieces you will have spent more than what you could have spent on the whole kit.
You also might want to go to a few more reef sites and look in the buy and sell and see if you can find a good deal on a used lighting system. Just keep in mind that most people will tell you that the bulb only has x amount of hours on them when in fact they might have more. So you might want to price bulbs while you are at it.
I found a better price on the lighting. This is the same price I paid for mine.

Gavin
http://www.aquacave.com/detail.aspx?ID=382

 

[Brad]

Unless you had plans on getting into LPS heavily I think you will be good with T5. I keep a 110 with 5 T5s. I have lots of softies, LPS (Tourch, frogspawn, candycane, bubbles, etc.) and a few SPS (monti digi and caps). I know others keep clams under under T5.

I'd go with a T5 retro kit. How wide is your tank at the ends? That will help us determine how many bulbs/reflectors you can fit.