lighting

[smellfishy]

I wanted to update my lighting on my tank for the reason. I want to get hard corals. right now I have the lighting that came with the tank. It is deffently not enough for hard corals. I also wanted to know whats better for reef setups VHO or metal halid.

 

[deuce_bigalo]

smellfishy,
First thing welcome aboard!!
IMO metal hylides are the best but I know a lot of people have awesome tanks with vho or power compacts.
What size tank do you have ? Live rock ? fish ? corals ?

 

[smellfishy]

I only have a 20gal. I am new to the hobby but love it. I have only 10lbs live rock,2inch sand bed snowflake eel, 10 blue legs, 10 turbos, pepermint, 2 sallys, horseshoe, emerald, straberry hawiian crab,fighting couch,serpent star, blue hippo, tube annemon,huma huma, pencil cushion, lunar wrasse,red mushroom
It hardly compares to your setup but I hardly know anything about the right way to clean and to up grade your tank.
If you don't mind me asking what is a LR and a protein skimmer I hope I don't need one

 

[coraltrapper5020]

lr- live rock. And a protine skimmer is only going to be helpful. You my have problems with your hum hum eating the corals you want to add.
As for lights look in to power compact, Or Metal Hylide. Vho's have to be replaced to often.

 

[ak_reefer]

Welcome aboard. I am not sure if I got this right. Do you have those fish and snowflake in a 20 or is that what you would like? If they are in a 20 you are going to have lots of problems bioload problems for sure. A Hippo and a Huma Huma both need a way larger tank than a 20 gallon. Also I am not sure about the Snowflake but I would imagine he would need a larger tank. Aslo Lunar Wrasses get fairly large themselves. Save yourself a lot of trouble and get a larger tank if not take the fish back to your LFS and wait until you have a larger tank. Some good fish for a 20 gallon are Percs, Firefish, Damsels..etc. Oh Yeah I know this was about lighting but I had to add the part about the fish. PC would be fine for a 20 gallon. IMO