Starting 29 gallon reef how much light ?

[la9]

I am going to set up a 29 gallon reef. I plan on keeping easy to care for corals. Can I get by with NO fluorescent ? Should I go with Power compacts ? Metal halide ?

Sugestions on corals would be helpful too and yes I will use the search button.

Thanks everyone

 

[nyghtone]

Heya, Welcome to AA!!!

To keep most corals that dont' have low light requirements your going to need around 5-6 watts per gallon of water. This is 145 - 174 watts. There are different ways to do this, MH and VHO being the most popular. I would research MH, VHO, and PC, you might be surprised what you find out!!!

I'm going with PC on my tank, but I have a 75 gal and have a little bit more room to work with. What are the dimensions of your tank???

Do you plan on keeping any fish? Tell us more about your plans...

HTH, Joshua...

 

[la9]

Tank size is 30l x 12w x 18h

I plan on using a 4 inch crushed coral live sand bed.

30+ pounds of live rock.

Reef cleanup crew

10 gallon sump with calupra

Aqua-c remora or urchin skimmer

Probably get 2 clownfish since it is too small for a tang.

Probably start out with colt, leather and mushroom corals.

Thinking about getting PC 2 x 65 watt one 10k one actinic bulb, hood.
Didn't now if I could get by with a couple T8 bulbs instead. Not sure about the metal halide since they run hot and I've been around some that the ballast buzzes.

 

[nyghtone]

I like your 2 X 65W PC idea, with your tank only being 18H that will look great.

For clarification, do you plan on mixing CC and sand???

HTH, Joshua...

 

[reefrunner69]

I would go with a 250W MH with maybe some actinic supplamentation.

 

[Atari]

You really need to decide which corals you want before purchasing lighting.

I would go with 4 x T5 .. 2 actinic + 2 white.

 

[malkore]

no matter what you want at least 120watts (4wpg minimum) to be able to handle the easier, lower light corals.
MH might be overkill on a 29gallon...but if you upgraded, you could easily transplant the MH to the new tank, saving a little $$ in the process.

 

[sicklidkid]

If you just use NOs make sure you have at least 3 wpg. with that you could probably keep shrooms, toadstool leather, colt coral, and some gorgonians. it is possible to do a reef with NO but i would highly reccomend getting some PCs or something better. But with PCs you can keep alot of softies and make a pretty good reef tank.
HTH

 

[klam]

If you got the money to spend, get MH.
I started off buying 48W PC's thinking I just wanted to have softies. Than I wanted to get LPS and upgraded to 96W PC. I caught the clam and SPS fixation and had to spend more money to upgrade to MH lighting. If I bought MH from the start I would have saved myself hundred of dollars that I could have spent on live stock.

With MH you can pretty much keep anything under the sun. The buzzing sound from some ballast is a pin drop when you got fans blowing, a skimmer running, and the water rushing down to the sump.

 

[la9]

Anyone use the new t5 lighting ? Are they very bright ?

 

[captivereefs]

the 30" coralife aqualight 2-65 watts would work greeat for most soft corals and polyps. Most LPS would thrive under it as well. I run this over a 26 bowfront and it does a good job.