[bugaboo]

I am trying to sort out this lighting thing. I have a 5o gal tank will be mostly fish LR want an anenome or two maybe one or two corals. I have read that corals and anenomes require up to 5w per gal. Right now I am looking at a fixture with two 96 w dual daylight and two dual Actinic for a total of 260 this should do the trick right. Looking at MH but am concerned the fixtures that would fit my tank would be like two 250 w MH and two 96 w Actinic which seems like too much plus the ballast for these things get pretty hot like start a house fire hot. Not to mention the price difference of $400.00 between the MH and T5. I want to make sure I have enough light for anenomes the tank is 48"x13" 18" deep.

[CyberJester]

You can get the MH in 125's, if you got two of those plus a couple of Actinics at 96 Watts. Then you would be looking at about 450 or so watts.

[NATIVEVAMAN]

It seems you are in a unique situation with a tank only 18 inchs deep.You could use just about any type of lighting you felt good about and grow hard corals.I would think that MH lighting on that tank would be maximum over kill.A set of 4 bulb t 5 48 inch lights putting out 54 watts each would be just fine.At 216 total watts that would be only 4.2 watts per gallon and some might say "you need 6 watts per gallon to grow hard coral". But that rule is sort of bogus and generally applys however incorrectly to tanks that are 24 or 30 inch's deep.Please reed this article.
Thoughts on Reef Aquarium Lighting… Keep Your Eye on the Prize! by Anthony Calfo- Reefkeeping.com

[Six-line Wrasse]

He could only use T5 or MH for SPS. CF bulb setups rarely meet the requirements of SPS corals.

T5s or MHs are fine. At 18" you can get away with 70W, 125W, 150W or even 175W. Any higher for MH is a bit touchy. For T5s, see NATIVEVAMAN's post.

[bugaboo]

Looking at the Nova extreme T5 light fixture one is 216 watts 2 54 w actinic and 2 54 w
10k they also have a larger one 432watts 8 54 w bulbs half actinic and half 10k. Like I said my tank is 18" 55 gal. deep and I would like to have an anenome at some time. Will either one of these work or do I need to go Metal Halide which is very expensive? Won't t5 work just as well as MH as long as wattage is the same?