[checker Jim]

so I joined a local reef club and ended up with a bunch of help from the locals.. if you have a local club in your area I highly recommend joining one. so I have a few options here as to what lights to run on my tank. its an 80 gallon tank 6 feet long.. one RBTA one LTA two SPS a handful of mushrooms, four true percula, one copper banded butterfly, one sea hare, one open brain, (cleaner crew too much to list) a whole bunch of sea squirts, clams, muscles, etc.. right now I have 4 48" 40W lights on it and everyone is doing OK. 2 10k and to actinic. for other lights I have that I may run is two 6' 10,000k VHO 160w fluorescent with Icecap model 430 ballast. or option 2 is 1 250w MH with 2 PC actinics. or I am thinking of running the running the 2 6' bulbs with the MH in the center of the tank. I am trying to be heat efficient here so I would prefer not to run MH on this tank being its only 18" deep. I think the 2 VHO's would be enough. and then I could run the MH on my 100 gallon cube.

any thoughts on any of these setups?

[malawi]

I would go with options two with the MH

[glampka]

If you're running MH, you should have a bulb every 2 feet. Since you only have 1, I wouldn't bother with it especially since it's a 250 W.

[checker Jim]

that's my conclusion also. the two vho bulbs are 160w each so that puts it at around 4 wpg. and with the tanks shallow depth I think it should be plenty. as for the MH it is 250 with two 25w actinic PC. so that would work pretty good for my 100 gallon cube. the tank is around 30" deep so the MH will penetrate better and put around 3 watts per gallon on that one. that single light should be enough and with the depth I could place light demanding corals at the top and less demanding towards the bottom.

[checker Jim]

just for the heck of it I threw the MH on half of the tank to check out how it looked compared to the fluorescent lights.. and WOW! is all I can say WOW!! I think I am going to have to get another one of these! the shimmer that comes off of the water ripples looks amazing and there were some strange little polyps that came in on some live rock I have had that just sprung to life after I turned on the light... amazing .... I think MH is the way to go... if I use two of these that would put it at 6.25 watts per gallon just from the MH and then with the actinic PCs that are in there puts it at 7.50 watts per gallon.. I know they say to use them every 2 feet but that would put it over the top as far as wattage go's. and the tank is only 15" wide and 18" deep so I don't know if three would be over kill.. I think two would look great!

check this critter out.. maybe some of you might know what it is..

[pogodzib]

Glad to hear that you found a local reef club to join. It is tough to find anything better in this hobby than a good reef club - cheap frags, great info, local contacts if you need help fast, etc...

For the lighting, the 2 VHOs would be enough for a softy tank, but since you want clams, you'd need to have more lighting so I'd say either T5HO or 3 MH. Watch out for the heat from the MH though if you go that route.

[checker Jim]

I have had the light on for about and hour now and I am closely monitoring the temp. so far so good. I added a small fan on the end of the tank to blow cool air across the bottom of the light and its doing OK. as for the three light thing that would put me well over 11 watts per gallon. wouldn't that be overkill on such a shallow tank?

[pogodzib]

What you need to go by more so that WPG is tank length and depth. MH only covers a 2' square, so you'd want to have 3 over a 6' long tank. For the 18" of depth, you'll want to go with either 150HQI, 175SE, or 250SE MH depending on what you want to keep. I'd probably end up going with either the 150HQI or 175SE unless you want to keep the most light demanding SPS corals. They would provide enough light for everything else and won't add as much heat.

[checker Jim]

the bulbs I have are coralife 250 w /U /T15 10K. the tank is in a pretty bright room so I will wait until tonight when its dark to take some pictures but this one light is effectively covering over half of my tank. I don't know where they get 2 feet square from because I am looking at this now and centered over half of my tank it is covering much more than 2 feet.