Piscevore
elsewhere
Esp with a tank as deep as yours, and just from my own personal experience (i sold a 65 not too long ago), do yourself a favor and buy the halides first (even if you have to go used or wait longer etc etc). You'll be able to keep clams, SPS, LPS, whatever you want, and you won't waste any money buying and rebuying~. Mine was lit with 2x250 SE bulbs.
If you are having a hard time deciding, I would suggest taking a peek a few members tanks before buying -anything-, because you'll probably learn a lot about what will or will not work for you.
For what its worth, I've got 250 hqi's over both my tanks. I used to Run XM 10k back in my single ended days, switched to HQI and AB 10k, and now i'm set on Ushio 10k's because they are less blue (GROW GROW GROW). It just doesn't make a lot of sense (to me) why a person would run anything other than Halides, esp in a mixed reef type tank. If you want less light(less par) (favoring softies for instance), run 175's or bluer light bulbs... some folks use VHO's for their actinic (blue light) supplementation also, because they provide Awesome blue's, but these again don't provide any real quantity of "useable" light.
Again and again, I hear people talking about "watts per gallon". This is what I like to refer to as "horse puckey". If you take 10,000 fifty watt light bulbs, and put them over your tank, you're going to have a gajillion watts of =electricity= used for sure, but the amount of photosynthetically available light reaching below 3" from the surface in that water is still going to be zero!! So the whole, wattage per gallon rule, is really not somethign I'd invest much confidence in. My frag tank is only 12" deep, but has a 36x18 foot print, and it is lit with a low hanging 250 HQI.
You'll also see "turnover" a mentioned a lot, suggesting you should turn your tank x number of times per hour. With things like in-tank power heads and closed loops, that also goes out the window. You don't need turnover, just flow! If you can move the water in the tank with a magical wave making elevator and skim out of themain tank, you'd never "turn it over" and things would be just fine! That said, i've more than once made the mistake of not factoring in enough flow. Maxijet 1200's on a red sea wavemaker are pretty great IMO. Tunze's are rockin' too
But they rip apart short tanks...
heh. I ranted a little.Some of those "common" statements just make me crazy, so i had to make a crazy post about them. good luck/cheers!
If you are having a hard time deciding, I would suggest taking a peek a few members tanks before buying -anything-, because you'll probably learn a lot about what will or will not work for you.
For what its worth, I've got 250 hqi's over both my tanks. I used to Run XM 10k back in my single ended days, switched to HQI and AB 10k, and now i'm set on Ushio 10k's because they are less blue (GROW GROW GROW). It just doesn't make a lot of sense (to me) why a person would run anything other than Halides, esp in a mixed reef type tank. If you want less light(less par) (favoring softies for instance), run 175's or bluer light bulbs... some folks use VHO's for their actinic (blue light) supplementation also, because they provide Awesome blue's, but these again don't provide any real quantity of "useable" light.
Again and again, I hear people talking about "watts per gallon". This is what I like to refer to as "horse puckey". If you take 10,000 fifty watt light bulbs, and put them over your tank, you're going to have a gajillion watts of =electricity= used for sure, but the amount of photosynthetically available light reaching below 3" from the surface in that water is still going to be zero!! So the whole, wattage per gallon rule, is really not somethign I'd invest much confidence in. My frag tank is only 12" deep, but has a 36x18 foot print, and it is lit with a low hanging 250 HQI.
You'll also see "turnover" a mentioned a lot, suggesting you should turn your tank x number of times per hour. With things like in-tank power heads and closed loops, that also goes out the window. You don't need turnover, just flow! If you can move the water in the tank with a magical wave making elevator and skim out of themain tank, you'd never "turn it over" and things would be just fine! That said, i've more than once made the mistake of not factoring in enough flow. Maxijet 1200's on a red sea wavemaker are pretty great IMO. Tunze's are rockin' too
But they rip apart short tanks...heh. I ranted a little.Some of those "common" statements just make me crazy, so i had to make a crazy post about them. good luck/cheers!
