Gooood laaawd!

[Cody_thenewguy]

So I've been looking into doing this for a while and I've got a 55g tall tank with a crack in the bottom. So first off should I mess around with this tank at all or maybe do a DIY project? Then if I do stick with this tank how can I find out about lighting? I've been searching the interwebs all day today trying to find a cheat sheet of sorts but I can't come up with anything.

 

[Aquarian]

I would ditch the tank. As far as lighting check out the lighting forum lots of info there.

 

[SarahSmile]

Pitch it. Or list it on craigslist as a reptile tank.

 

[d2mini]

Hi, welcome to living reefs. :)

You would be much better off waiting for Petco to run their $1/gallon sale and just get a spiffy brand new tank.
They run this sale quite often. Meanwhile, do your research and start picking up other equipment that you are going to need. Check petco to see what size tanks they typically carry and decide now which size you are going to get since that will determine a lot of your other purchases.

You have lots of choices for lighting. T5, Metal Halide, LED. You will need to decide what you want to keep in your tank before deciding on which fixture.
Just fish? A few soft corals? A full blown reef tank?

 

[Cody_thenewguy]

Well I'm taking the advice and I'm just gonna use it for a bearded dragon tank! I'm leaning more towards a 50 to 55 gallon one, but is there any plus side to a bow front? And for lighting I like the price ranges of LED, you guys seem to not really like them for corals though. Why is that? I really want my tank to be more soft corals than anything. Should I just start saving up to get a t5?

 

[d2mini]

You gotta be ready to spend some cash for good LEDs that have enough PAR for LPS and SPS coral. This will cost more than T5 or MH to get started.
My coral are doing very well under Radion Pros.
T5 will be cheaper in the short run, and they can grow amazing SPS coral tanks no problem. You say you think you only want softies now, but that will probably change in the future. ;)

 

[Cody_thenewguy]

How will I know what type/color of T5 to go with though? That's another reason I was looking into LED's. I've been looking at reviews on youtube and trying to get some research under my belt before sounding like a total newbie but all that research is really just making more complicated annnnd waaay more confusing!!

 

[Sidekick41]

I currently have a 55 gallon but it's not a tall. If I had the money I wouldg with LED but I couldn't afford it so I went with T-5's. With yours being a tall light is going to have a harder time getting to the bottom of the tank but I would think a 6 bulb T-5 would work for you. Also, if you go LED watch out for the ones that have a GREAT price tag and are much cheaper than the rest of them. Those normally only have 1 watt per LED instead of the 3 watt.

 

[d2mini]

How will I know what type/color of T5 to go with though?

You can look at what others are running to get you started.
After that it's trial and error.
I can tell you that ATI Blue+ and ATI Purple+ are amazing bulbs with insane amounts of PAR. These two will really make your colors pop. Then you'll need some white light to help even out the color so its not so blue. I used to run 3 blue+ and 1 purple+ combined with a single 12k or 14k metal halide bulb. Looked awesome.

 

[Cody_thenewguy]

Awesome! Thank you guys for the tips! Now I gotta get to shopping around! haha

 

[Becky]

A belated welcome from me too! Using the old tank for a Bearded Dragon sounds like a great idea, I love those little guys :)