 Lights? T5's? Where/What to buy?
I have a 92 gallon corner tank with live rock and sand, blue tang, yellow tang, 2 clowns, yellow tail damsel, 4 stripe damsel, some hermit crabs, snails, 2 shrimp and a red starfish, and a few groups of button polyps and a few yellow star polyps.
We have a 36" power compact light that is not doing much. We only have a few polyp corals, but it would be nice to have more options. The tank is pretty deep (24") and it is an odd shape (like 1/4 of a circle, fits into the corner). It also has a wooden canopy, the stand and canopy were custom built and the canopy is basically just a big wooden lid that fits down over the top, and the front 13" or so lifts right off for maintenance and feeding. Right now the light sits on top of 2 small pieces of glass which prop it up on each end. The tank did have a full glass lid too that the light sat on but in the summer the tank got really hot so i took it off and it has been better.
The tank already has had problems with heat from the light in there so I really need to go with something that will not be any hotter than the PC light. I am thinking T5 VHO.
I am thinking for confihuration of the lights there could be a 36" light across the middle and then a 24" light behind it, or I could put three 24" lights in a triangle around the edge, with possible something really small right in the middle. Not sure if I should prop the lights up from the water like I am now or if I should get something that could be attached to the wooden canopy (this might make it hard to take the canopy off if we need to). I had been looking at retrofit lights, but I don't really have the time to figure out how to put together something really complicated, and all of the ones I read about wanted the ballast away from the water, how does that work? If a retrofit wouldn't be too complicated or time consuming I would be all for it (I am pretty handy).
So what I am asking is for someone to give me a few opinions and options on what would be the best to buy for number of bulbs and type of bulbs and configuration (2 lights, 3 lights, one with lots of bulbs) and a good website to buy from.
Thanks,
Marcie  |