Got my clowns, now for lights...

[louti]

Well, I finally got my pair of gols striped maroons that I've always wanted. They are in my 29 for now while I set up their 40 gallon breeder. I want to do a BTA for them to host in the 40. It is 16 inches deep and the anemone will sit high on live rock. I want to do T5 lighting. How many watts and what spectrum should I use? I was thinking 156 watts 2 10k 2 actinic. Will this be good or would you recommend a different configuration?

 

[scsinet]

That lighting system will be fine, but I'd recommend against running actinics in it, or running one lamp at most.
Reason being is that actinics are basically to make things look pretty, but they produce very little, if any, light that the animals can actually use. Therefore, you pretty much have to derate your fixture by the sum of the wattage of actinics. So if you have 156w (4x39w lamps), and two are actinic, derate the wattage by 78w, so you really only have 78w of useful light, which is not enough.
One thing to remember is that anemones can move, and they can move to areas where it is not in their best interests to move. You can place the anemone where you want, but it'll likely move, but will stay along the top only if you are lucky. Forcing an anemone to move is very hard on it, so you need to plan to be able to support the anemone's needs wherever it may go in the tank.

 

[louti]

Okay, that is a good idea. I will just ditch the actinics and get useful lights then. What would be the best spectrum? And do you think that is enough if he were to move to the bottom?

 

[bulldog123]

You hope the bta will sit high on the rocks. It will move where ever and when ever it wants. And if it decides to move it could leave a path of destruction it is way.

 

[scsinet]

Without actinics, your 10K lamps might look a little yellow.
You might look into the Giesemann Aquablue lamps.