Lighting Mumbo-Jumbo

[d9hp]

Ive been told so much about lighting and such lately, i dont know what to do. Ive heard it will cost 100304939 all the way to 200! what do i do and what do i need. I want to keep some polyps, shrooms, anchors, trumpets, sebae, leathers and other inverts and softs. Please tell me what i need and how cheap i can get it. Money is an issue considering this is from scratch, i wont get the coral until june but i dont want to buy a light and in a few months have to buy some more lights! Anything will be an advancement.

 

[michealprater]

try www.hellolights.com.

 

[loganj]

lighting

Lighting is such a confusing subject. I have been told that you can keep soft corals under NO fluorescent lighting but that you want to stay at or over 3 watts per gallon. This is a kinda vague formula because of the many variables that affect it such as tank depth, ect... I know you can get a NO electronic ballast from www.fullspectrumsolutions.com for $49.00 that will run four 40 watt 48" bulbs. You can get the VHO endcaps for around $10-12.00 a pair I think. You'll want to use these since they are watertight and inhibit corrosion. This would give you 160 watts of light. You'll want a good reflector over them. At least paint the inside of the canopy gloss white. The Aquarium Systems Triton and Blue Moon bulbs are pretty good. If you're really on a tight budget, GE makes a Salt and Fresh and a Blue Actinic. I use them and they seem to do well. We stock them at the store and they are cheaper to buy than most of the others. You can also get an electronic ballast from Home Depot that will light 4 32 watt T-8 48" bulbs. This limits you to using the T-8 size bulbs though and I don't know about the availability of endcaps for these. Note that this is not the optimal lighting system, but it should work and will get you started. If you decide on VHO, I like the Icecap ballast. You can get URI bulbs. I would run an equal ratio of blue and white on the bulbs. I would think that, if you go the VHO route, 2 110 watt bulbs would be enough to get started. The Icecap 660 will run up to 4 48" bulbs so it wouldn't be any trouble to up the wattage later if needed. Not knowing what you want to keep, it's hard to recommend anything very specific. I wouldn't recommend any SPS or LPS corals under this amount of light. If you build your own canopy, I'd leave the back open to help dissipate heat. If you end up with VHO's, you may find that a fan is needed. PC's are great too, but are a little more costly. The Icecap will run these too though. MH...well, they're hot and expensive. I don't think you'll need light of this intensity for soft corals. Hope this helps some .
Logan J

 

[fishfreek]

www.ahsupply.com for PC ballast kits. www.hellolights.com for PC blubs.

Remember this is not a buy once solution. For NO florecents your gonna be replacing the bulbs every 6-8 months. For PC bulbs your gonna be replacing them every 9-12 months.

The ballast is about the onlything your buying long term when you buy lights.

There are many lighting threads on here now I would do a search for "lighting" and read some of the posts that come up.

Your doing a good job of trying to plan out well in advance. Early planning will surly save you money.

 

[Jacob Morgan]

wowzors dustin Slow down lol...

your very enthusiastic but patience will pay off man.. its good to have u in the chat alot tho....

Some corals require different lighting here is 2 examples

But Sebeas are hard to keep (the anemone anyway) and they need intense lighting to keep anyway.

The mushroom require only low level lighting. (3wpg do them great).

It really depends on what you have and how much money you can spend. If you can only afford right now lighting for 3wpg then keep mushrooms... you can always move up later

lighting is very confuising I have A plan for using NO on a 55 if you would like to hear it just say so. I plan to try it when I move up to a 55.


Jacob

 

[d9hp]

Good Good Good

I did some research last nite and quickly found out that 725 is not what i have to pay. Im thinking of building my own hood considering i have a lot of experience building things and it will save me some mega money. I am looking at a kit from hellolights, the link is:

http://store.yahoo.com/lamps-now/482x96wret.html

can i just put some mushrooms at the bottom of the tank and still have this kind of lighting? If i do build my own hood, im going to leave most of the back open and put a white plexi-glass type thing around the whole inside for evap. purposes. Sound good? thought of it last nite. Well all this stuff wont come until around April so im really checkin around. The money is not coming in as fast as i would like but im hoping to get some more hours in. Any help will be wonderful.

 

[Jacob Morgan]

Aaron(freek) has a great DYI simple canopy. I made one similiar cept mine CAN fall off the tank. it hasn't yet. If aarons istoo hard just let me knwo and I can post about mydesign. whcih was simple ( 4 peices)



Jacob

 

[freshmaker]

You might check out the following link. I just purchased my lights from here and they are great.

http://www.marinedepot.com/a_lt_pc_pfo.asp?CartId=

 

[loganj]

another idea

Here's another idea for finding your lighting. In reply to a post on lighting that I sent, MichealPrater suggested checking Ebay. Have you looked there? There were some pretty good deals on lighting last night. VHO, PC, and MH were listed. Something to consider anyway.
Logan J