Whoo hoo another lighting question!

theishkid

theishkid

Member
Ok in a few months when the new house is built I'm gonna upgrade to a 75 or 100 gallon tank... probably 75. Either way I'm gonna upgrade my lighting. This is gonna be a reef tank. So I'm thinking I'm gonna go with MH. But is that all I need? Should I just get a setup with maybe 2 MH Bulbs at 14,000k? Will I need some other kind of lighting to go along with that or will that be plenty?
Thanks
Brad
 
razoreqx

razoreqx

Active Member
That would be fine by itself. But if you really want to bring out the color reflection of a reef add some PC or VHO lights to complement those MH's..
 
robchuck

robchuck

Active Member
You'll definately want two MH bulbs over a 75 gallon tank, preferably 250W. 14,000K is a good color temperature to run unsupplemented; I run 15,000K Coralvues by themselves, and used to run 13,000K PFOs unsupplemented, and really liked the colors of both bulbs by themselves.
 
theishkid

theishkid

Member
what does that mean... to run unsupplemented? Has anyone seen the new aqualight pro from coralife yet? Do you think it is worth the $700 bucks it cost?
links of that nature not allowed.
(Sorry if i wasn't supposed to post that)
Also can someone please tell me what HQI stands for?
 
theishkid

theishkid

Member
well see my big problem is that i need something like that in a nice fixture. I'm only gonna be in my house for 2 or 3 years then moving again so I cant do a whole lot of customizing. I need something that I would be able to move. Second... I'm not that smart, never pretend to be and I know nothing about lighting and wiring etc, so I need something that's not going to be too hard. Can someone point me somewhere with good prices on lighting? also is a 250 watt light that much better than a 150 watt?
 
T

tizzo

Guest
You've already seen my fixture, so I won't bore you with that. But as far as your last question, I had 175w and upgraded to 250w. I thought as long as I had MH's I could get anything in my tank. Turns out that I cannot put stonies or clams towards the bottum. If you want lights that you won't need to upgrade later, get the 250's. I got the ice-cap ballasts, so when these bulbs expire, I am going to replace the mogul sockets with DE's. Since you need the whole fixyure, find out what it would cost to upgrade the DE bulbs to 250 watts. Maybe the price diff. won't be much...
 
T

tizzo

Guest
Holy cow that's a coralife product... If you want to e-mail me, I'll send you a link to some good light options. Around the same price you mentioned though.
 
theishkid

theishkid

Member
Well I guess what I don't understand about lighting is where did all the MH talk come from? A year ago when I was looking around I wanted to get some clams. I was told in order to do that I would need VHO's. Now everyone is saying you have to have MH's.
 
T

tizzo

Guest
No way a clam would survive under vho's. I got my clam, and I had 2 175w MH's with 2 vho actinics and within 2 weeks he started getting splotchy loosing his color. I placed him high in my tank, that didn't fix him, but it kept it from getting worse. Now he is under a 250, and it seems like each day I could see him getting better. And he isn't even done with the acclimation process yet!!
 
badkharma

badkharma

Member
There HAVE been clams that have thrived under VHO's but, that's rare (so I wouldn't try it if I were you), and your chances are much higher with MH's.
 
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