Lighting for an upgrade from FOWLR to Reef

[Vinman75]

I currently have a 55 gallon tank with FOWLR and am thinking of changing down the road to a reef tank and getting some LPS coral. My question is would I have to change my lighting as currently it is a NOVA Extreme High Output T5 Lighting with 108 total watts. One 54 watt 10K white bulb and one 460 actinic 54 watt bulb.
Would this be enough for the reef tank and to have LPS coral in the tank?

 

[Dashiki]

Youd need to go to a 4 lamp bulb to keep the corals happy.

 

[Vinman75]

The two bulbs will not cut it? Is there a rule of thumb to use in regard to the watts per gallon of water or anything?

 

[gpx1200]

you could add a diy strip of led's on a peice of 3/4in aluminum c-chanell and have plenty of light for softys and lps, you could probably mount it right to your curent light fixture.

 

[dannyp02908]

2 bulbs will allow you to keep some softies. Mushrooms, palys, kenya trees, xenia, anthelia. I agree, minimum 4 bulbs for LPS. Probably go 6 to be safe. Watts per gallon isnt a good rule of thumb since lighting efficiency will come in to play. The club has a PAR meter you could use to check your lighting but most people are giving you an answer based on experience with T5s. Also, diffierent color bulbs put out less light than others. So your 2 bulb is effectively 1 bulb since actinic lights dont really produce usable light. Even in keeping the 2 bulb and sticking to softies, i would swap the bulbs to an blue plus and aquablue special from ATI. ATI bulbs are known to be more powerful in terms of efficiency compared to most other bulbs. The blue+ will still give you an actinic "pop" but also provide usable spectrum to your corals.

 

[Moe_K]

Howdy,

Back in the day I kept a 55 gal tank with 4 VHO lights atop.
I got awesome coraline growth, too much growth from zoos and mushrooms, great growth from my nephthea, and decent growth from my acropora and montipora SPS corals.
Oh yeah, xenia went wild too. Most of my SPS coral were frags from other hobbyists.

Soon after I got started I ran out of room in the 55. If I had to do over, I might have gone MH or LED right from the start if I had to go with the 55. If I could have gotten a 75 I would have gone that route.

 

[THE WOOKIE]

save yourself a headache and build a diy LED fixture or buy a low end LED fixture and be done with it. i was debating whether to go T5 VHO or LED and eventually decided on led because of the shimmer effect it puts off and the fact that you will never have to change the bulbs. i can pm you the link to the fixtures i have on my 75. the two of them cost $380 and are dimmable.