46g Bow front lighting help

Altohombre

Altohombre

The Tennis Pro Reefer
Ok I think I am gonna take the plunge and change my mind from just a FOWLR to a Reef. So I need lights for my 46g Bowfront. Dimensions are 36x16x21
my rocks aren't that high (no more than halfway up tank) so there will be no corals too close to the lights. In addition I have a 2.5 inch sandbed. Some features I am interested in but don't need to have are: moon lighting and the sunrise/sunset feature.

I really don't have a clue about corals at all, so lets just say I would like to be able to go to the LFS and see a coral and know that I could put it in my tank and not have to worry about my lights.

Another big concern is that my tank is directly under our thermostat and I would like lights that would not impact the temperature or be too noisy.

I ideally would like to keep my budget in the $250 or under range. Is there anything out there for me?
 
A 21" deep tank would be well lit by a 250 watt Halide, which would allow you to grow any form of stoney coral in any where in the tank and soft corals in the lower third of the tank. However, your thermostat will need protection for any good lighting source you choose, whether it be halide, VHO, T5 or Power Compact. If you get serious with stoney corals, the only truly good light source is the halide. The others fall short for SPS corals at anything over about 12 inches depth. One good thing also about the halide is that it is easier to channel heat from a centralized small area than from a broader spread out area such as the other lighting choices. This requires nothing more than a fan(s), which in your case should exhaust from the end(s) of the lighting fixture instead of the top of he fixture. Better yet, a fixture with an intake fan on one side of fixture and an exhaust fan in the other side of fixture. A HQI fixture is more efficient than a (old style) Mogul bulb fixture. The best lighting arrangement is usually a HQI halide with supplemental lighting supplied by power compact(s). The halide provides the light intensity and the proper spectrum for optimal coral health and growth and the power compact(s) supplies the supplemenatl blue spectrum light that makers viewing better and makes the colors pop. Moon lights are standard in all the really good lighting fixtures now days. (1) An Aqualight Pro is a great light, I use the 696 watt fixture on my 120 gallon tanks. Your best choice would be one of the 280 Watt fixtures. Sadly they are expensive at $450 t0 $500, with halide, power compacts and lunar lights. Plus they only come with a 150 watt HQI halide , not the preferable 250 watt. (2) Outer Orbit makes cheaper lights, Outer Orbit HQI/Compact Flourscent/Lunar Light with electronic ballasts and the side fans that would work better for you. I think the quality possibly a little lower, but the set up would fit your needs better and the price is less at this time. However it is also only available with a 150 watt HQI halide. (3) Outer Orbits Pro Series HQI/T-5/LED Lights combo is even more expensive than the Aqualight Pro, but they come with the preferred 250 watt HQI halide, two T-5 blue spectrum lights and 12 moon lights. Plus they come with side fans and built two built in electronic light timers. The price is $100 dollars more than the Aqualight pro, and $150 more than the Outer orbit Halide,/ Power compact fixture, both of which only have 150 Watt halides. Really, although expensive the best deal for your needs is the most expensive choice. As you can see all the lighting for the assurance of fitting any corals needs is about double what you would like to spend. Not surprised are you?
 
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You absolutely do not need to go with MH to be unlimited on corals for your size tank.All you have to do is visit Reef Central SPS keeper threads.There some beautiful SPS dominant reefs running under all T5's.However,I know of no fixture that will allow you to keep all corals for $250 and under.The Nova Extreme($180) are a T5-HO fixture with lunars.You should be able to keep soft,LPS and possibly some SPS,clams.Others here has kept SPS with that fixture but I'm not convince its good enough long term.

This fixture comes the closest to your pricewise.You should be unlimited but I recommend changing the bulbs.The slimpaq bulbs have poor PAR compared to other T5 bulbs like the ATI and UV bulbs.
36" Nova Extreme Pro 6x39watt T5HO 10K/460nm: Premium Aquatics

I like this one better-better individual reflectors than the Nova Pro but cost $50 more without bulbs.
Sunlight Tek Light T5 Hood - 36" x 6 bulb: Premium Aquatics

The Aquactinics are even more expensive than the Tek so I didn't bother linking that fixture.
 
which unit do you think would run cooler temperatures and lessen the swing on my thermostat?

So for the Sunkight Tek it would be the 350 + 125 for lights making it $475.

Crap, I have the money, but I am being cheap.

The Nova Extreme is 120 bucks cheaper than the pro and if i have to get new lights that would be about 125 more, still making it $305. Hmm that might be more my level, since I am not even sure I can keep 1 coral let alone difficult ones that need crazy light.
 
You would really need to wait 6 months for your tank to mature before trying SPS corals.That will give you plenty of time to change at least half of the Nova Pro bulbs with better ones.Get that one if price is an issue.

All three fixtures will run cool.The Novas have built in fans so they will run cooler than the Tek fixture.
 
would you say that the corals that need better light like the SPS and clams are cooler looking than the rest of the corals. I have tried to research which coral is which but I don't really see a big difference from pictures. If I can make an awesome looking reef full of bright and differing colors from just running a Nova Extreme, I may be interested in that rather than shelling out 150 more that I could spend on my first corals. If you think these SPS corals and clams help make the reef then I may be in a tough situation. I dunno even how much stuff in terms of corals I can fit in a 46g with 60lbs live rock anyway.
 
It is kinda hard to justify to people that I am spending this much money on a fish tank when I still live in an apartment with 2 roommates, am not in a job that can support a future family on, and can tell my girlfriend not to buy more shoes because she needs to pay for books while I go spend $1500 on a hobby within 2 months. Right now I have money to spend, but that is also future money I will prob need to spend on life things. LOL at myself.
 
You can have different color,bright corals with the Nova Extreme.SPS do have some awesome colors but there are some LPS and softies that have awesome color too.Many of us been in this hobby a while now.SPS is more difficult which is sort of a progression for us.We all done the soft and LPS,the next logical step to gravitate towards SPS.
 
thanks reef, how come I cant find any info about your Aquatinic Constellation lights. I just wanted to check them out, but there is nothing on google about them.
 
Matt that lighting link I put up y-day has a ton of options and price ranges depending on types of corals wanted I dont member which thread its in think maybe it was 6 ft one but Im not sure.
 
yeah, I looked at it pretty closely. I wish they had 46g listed instead of just 50 and 55's. But it helped me think that the Nova Extreme line was pretty good. The others they recommended were PC lights or MH which most people are saying to avoid the compact lighting and that MH aren't needed and run hot.
 
There are different aspects of keeping corals. There is maintenance of corals , grow out of corals and propagation of corals. There are lots of people who maintain coral, even some SPS on NO (normal output) fluorescents. There are many more people maintaining corals and getting good, fair growth rates with soft corals and large polyp corals using T5's and VHO fluorescents. There are very few people getting good, consistent, fast growth of SPS with T-5's, and even less success is had using T-5's with SPS frag grow out. There are exceptions, such as lights within 10 inches to a foot of SPS corals and SPS frags or closer in very shallow tanks made for frag grow outs. However, with what most would consider acceptable growth and propagation success T-5's can not come close to comparing with halides. However, lots of people are for some strange reason content with just keeping and possibly propagating soft corals, and not a large percentage of reefers continually keep SPS corals, yet alone try propagating them. But, if your one of those who always want more, more, more, then SPS propagation with halides is that more in reefing! If you are concerned about heat stop to think, Light = heat out put, therefore the more efficient the light the less waste heat produced. Halides are more efficient and put out less waste heat than, T-5's, VHO, Power Compacts to NO flourescents. A halides waste heat is just more concentrated (meaning contained in a smaller area, IE a HQI bulb is only about 2 inches long), than long tubes which spread there increased amount of heat out over a larger area and therefore appear to be cooler. The same amount of coral usable light produced by T-5's, VHO's, NO's or power compacts will producw more excess heat PERIOD. There is no free unch with lights either. The only other light that is more efficient and produces light usable for corals is the new generation LED, but you wiil have to easily pay in excess of $1000 for light output equivalent to a 250 watt halides output. When your lucky in the aquarium trade you get what you paid for. Unfortunately lots of people pay for to little and get to little and are stuck with doing less than they want to, or they have to go back out and buy what they should have in the beginning. Hell, even Biffer uses halides, and she is very stubborn. Of course you can stick with fish and use a few incadescent light bulbs, they do not care.
 
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fatman said:
Hell, even Biffer uses halides, and she is very stubborn. Of course you can stick with fish and use a few incadescent light bulbs, they do not care.
Click to expand...

I use halides on my current tank, because it's 7 feet long and 3 feet deep. Just too big for T5s.

On my previous tank (55 gallon), I used T5s and saw MUCH faster SPS growth than I have with my current tank. If it was realistic for my tank, I would have gone with T5s this time around also. I just like them better than MH.
 
What bulbs are you using that you do not like your halides (K value). I can not believe any other light including T-5's can produce better results with hard corals, especially SPS than hadide 6500K. Are you using around 6500K bulbs and complimenting with blue spectrum or just using high K bulbs. High K might look good, but they do not produce anywhere as good a results as 6500k bulbs. You are just comlpimenting with acitinic for better viewing color, I hope. Other wise the comparisom is moot. What is your water depth above sand? How many bulbs, what are their wattages? I do not believe nearly every marine and reef expert is wrong about halides and that we should use cheaper less efficient T5's instead. :frustrat:
 
Actually,theres a full 100 and something long thread on reefcentral by grimreefer where he compared T-5s to halides.Says with some of the T-5 bulbs,you can actually get quiet a bit more par rating than with halides.
 

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