expensive lighting

[nazz13]

I have a 75 gal. tank and want to upgrade my lighting so i can put whatever i want in the tank as far as coral goes.does anyone know of any fully assembled full hoods that would work good and isnt very expensive or are they all expensive??????????

 

[fishnet]

Originally Posted by nazz13
so i can put whatever i want in the tank as far as coral goes.
That's the kicker... in short, NO, there isn't cheap lighting. If you want to do SPS and clams and the like, you're talking metal halide and/or VHO lighting... not cheap. You should expect to shell out $500+ for "anything goes" lighting.
And that's why I'm trying to upgrade my normal output fluorescent lighting to power compacts, but not MH. With PC lighting I can get many of the things I want (like shrooms and softies), but not anything.

 

[benj420]

That depends upon what you think expensive is. You are probably going to be looking at $750 - $1000 for a fully assembled hood with two 175w or 250w Metal Halides and two 48" VHO's. That will allow you to keep any type of coral.

 

[nazz13]

Yeah thats what i figured,I was just searching the net for some stuff looks like about 600 $ for what i want but i guess thats not tooo bad.

 

[hagfish]

I highly recommend building your own hood and getting some retrokit MH's, possibly even used. On my 72 bow I did this and spent maybe $200-220 and I've got 2-250 watt MH's. It also has 2 55 watt pc's that I gutted from a jebo fixture that cost about $50.
The cheapest MH's will have a ballast that was previously used in a warehouse or someplace like that. The PAR may not be quite as good, but it's still going to be a lot better than PC's and probably cost about as much as a PC setup with half the watts anyway. Keep an eye on the classified's on this board and others as well as the auction site.