I need some advice on building a canopy with lights!!!

pooh tang

pooh tang

New Member
Hello,
I need some advice on building a canopy with lights. I am new to the hobby and am taking things very slow. I have had my tank running for about 3 weeks and don’t plan on adding anything until I have all of my live rock and lighting in place. As of now this is what my tank looks like:
· Forty-gallon tank
· fluval 304-canister filter
· Rio 1100 power head
· 50 lbs of southdown sand
· 2 lbs of live sand
· 10-15 lbs of base rock
· 5 lbs of live rock (I will be adding an additional 45 lbs of live rock, soon)
I built the tank stand myself. Now I plan on building a canopy with lights. I need some advice. What type of lights would you recommend? Since I am a beginner I don’t plan on keeping anything too difficult or expensive. I want to start off with a couple of fish, some live rock, maybe a few feather dusters, some mushroom rock, etc. I think you get my point. However, I want good lighting incase in a year from now my interest and expertise grows. Another question is where can I buy the ballast and electrical hardware? Can I go to Home Depot or do I have to order the hardware directly from a fish website? Is there a difference? Any advice and past experiences would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
cadbury

cadbury

Member
I would say hook up with a fellow expertise reefer thats a good friend and have him show you the ropes, ask a lot of questions, but don't call him during work hours and bug him! LOl :cool:
 
pooh tang

pooh tang

New Member
I know this one guy I might be able to contact. But we have different philosophies. He tried telling me that I should put a minimum of 18 fish in my tank.
 
krux

krux

Member
if i was doing a diy over a 40, i would probably go with a dual 250w ballast, but i would only use one of the connections, going with dual cause the initial outlay is like 30 bucks more, and when you upgrade tanks down the line and get something longer you dont need a whole new ballast.
in this i would run a 65000k bulb. good coral growth.
to supplemet this, i would put in a double 96 watt pc fixture. same deal as before. you only really need one of the lights going, but if you wanted to get more light you could hook up a second, or you would have room to add on for a larger tank. in this i would run an actinic 03 bulb, not a 50/50 but full blue as you have plenty of white coming from the mh bulb. if you look online you can find differing intensities of blue. if you wanted to go with a shallower looking tank, get a regular blue, for a deeper look, you could go with the dk. blue. the cool thing with this configuration is if it isnt blue enough, just buy another pc plug and pop in a second fixture!
if getting dual ballasts, be sure that each light is on a separate switch and plug if at all possible, this way to can set each light on a separate timer to give a good dawn to dusk rotation.
finally, if you really arent planning on having any photo sensitive inverts, you could just put a dual pc ballast along with 2 light units inside yer canopy, but i would put them along the sides, leaving room in the middle for a later addition of a reflector and halide socket... at some point you will want a clam or a acro im sure.
hth, thats what i would do.
 
slick

slick

Active Member
This is my take on things. I would not get a MH set up yet. I would get a VHO ballast and just run 2 bulbs for now. a 10k and a actinic. Reason being when you upgrade to a large tank thats when you buy your MH's and you already have a VHO set up to use for actinics. You will be able to keep a lot of different types of corals under VHO lighting. As far as places to go send me a e-mail and I'll help you the best I can.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top