Lighting and coral choices

[artskoi]

I have a 135 gal tank with flourescent lighting.It has just 200 watts.Half in Actinic 3 and half in 20,000 K bulbs.I want to stock the tank with Soft Corals and just a few fish.I do not want to change wood canopies or add Metal Halides.I have read information on the corals and I came up with the following list.Please advise me if I should omit any from my list or put toward the top or bottom of the list.
1.green or green star polyp
2.Finger or lobed leather
3.toadstool leather
4.colt coral
5. Ricordea
6. Mushrooms
7. Rhodactis
8. Blastomussa
Take any of list or add any?

 

[adrian]

I would suggest a 4-6 bulb VHO set up, 4 would probably do it, but 6 would be better. The coral you mentioned for the most part are not very light demanding and will do well under florescents. I would go with URI bulbs, a mixture of actinics, and aquasun which appear a bit brighter than the actinic whites. With the above lighting, you should be fine as long as you stick to softies, LPS, and polyps, provided everyhting else about the tank is adequate. HTH

 

[artskoi]

I am using Coralife 20,000 K bulbs and Actinic Magtinic 03 blue.The colors using this combination are wonderful.I only wish I had the lights with me when I shop at the LFS.I see mushrooms that are plain green with the stores metal Halides and there Neon in my lights.Light blue in the Metal Halides are metallic green in my lights.My colrs are all different than what I see in the store.Mine I like better.

 

[burnnspy]

Actually MH lighting coming in different K ratings also exhibit different colors.
Flo bulbs cannot reproduce the light shimmer of the MH bulb or the sun. I prefer the natural appearence that the shimmer lends to a reef with MH bulbs.
BurnNSpy

 

[vkesu]

I had several of your mentioned corals in my tank (plus a few hard corals). My husband purchased the vho - ballast kit from thatpetplace and it cost half the price. My corals were beautiful. We had four lights, we did add a good fan in the top for the heat. My toadstool leather was my favorite. It was pumping out offspring all the time. PS> if you like them, don't forget and leave the air conditioning off when you go on vacation I ended up losing all of mine. So now, I'm broke again and stocking up!