Lighting for 125

[kaiser]

I have upgraded to a 125 gallon tank. Needless to say my lighting (48" 220W PC) is not enough for that tank. Which way would be more economical to get enough light on this? Would 2x250 do the trick? It is an oceanic natureview tank with centerbrace 72" long. After buying this I don't have a whole lot of cash left so if I can get one thing now and add something else later would be good. For now it will be more of a FOWLR, but as time and money allows I will be adding more LR. Any Inputs would be appreciated.

[Inno]

I had 4x96w pc setup on my 125 and the only limit I had was sps (I don't care for sps anyways), even had a blue maxima placed at the top. Most light loving corals would be placed up top, but hard and soft did well in my tank :)

[captexas]

You could try some 5ft. or 6ft. VHO's. Then later on if you want to try more corals you can just add a couple of metal halides and use the same VHO setup to supplement them. 60in. VHO's are 140watts each and the 72" bulbs are 160watts. You could go with a 2 bulb setup and still use your PC fixture to have more light in the middle for some corals. Check Hellolights.com for some ideas on new pricing. If you have a canopy, just get a retrofit kit which is less expensive.

[TexasState]

Cheap Way:
$115 - URI (Icecap) Ballast
$20 - 3 pairs of Water-proof endcaps
$15 - 2, six foot, 65K Florescent bulb from Home Depot
$40 - Six Foot URI SuperActinic

Half *** Way:
$650 - 2 MH Pendant on electronic ballast

Doing it right:
$1200- 3 MH Pendant on electronic ballast & Actinic Supplementation

Here's picture of my 125 Nature View doing it the half *** way:
http://www.swt.edu/~xp42012/2002/june-02-125-.jpg

[Inno]

By the way, what type of corals are you interested in, future wise?

[PeeJ]

sweet new tank kai. perhaps some more live rock is in order...hehehe. did you buy anything today?

[MikeP]

Depends on where you want to go with your reef. I would seriously look at a cheap metal halide solution like getting those mercury vapor ballasts and a Iwasaki bulb and reflector. You could do one for maybe 150 -160 bucks and then do another one or two down the road. The only drawback is the M59 (or was it 58) MV ballast will only fire the Iwasaki 6500 correctly to my knowledge.

VHOs would look nice but my experience is they are expensive to replace if you want to actually use them to grow corals as they have a relatively short usable lifespan (6mos - year tops depending on photoperiod).

[Henry]

Here is the link for the DIY Halides (http://aquarium.union.rpi.edu/rpi.htmlurl) It really easy to do.

[kaiser]

Henry,
That link don't work. 404 error :(

[manny]

Kai, do you have a canopy? By the way that's a nice anemone you got there! ;)

[kaiser]

Nope don't have no canopy, but I may build one. here is a better pic of the anemones.

[manny]

This is what I came up with Kai. You need a canopy for em but you can always build an "economical" one for right now and build a nicer one later. I'm no lighting expert so maybe some other people will say if these are good or bad. Most of what I've come up with is advice from Josh so if someone doesn't agree with these setups you can blame it on him :lol: jk

This is all stuff from www.hellolights.com

1st setup (800 W): Magnetic Ballast System
2 X 400W (M59) Metal Halide Retrofit Kit ~Probe Start (Item Code: 43-30450 (http://store.yahoo.com/lamps-now/40methalretk.html)) $89.00 = $178.00
2 X 400 W Metal Halide Bulb for probe start ballast ≈ $88.00 ≈ $176.00
Total Cost ≈ $354.00 @ 6.4 W per gallon

2nd setup (1200 W): Magnetic Ballast System
3 X 400W (M59) Metal Halide Retrofit Kit ~Probe Start (Item Code: 43-30450 (http://store.yahoo.com/lamps-now/40methalretk.html)) $89.00 = $267.00
3 X 400 W Metal Halide Bulb for probe start ballast ≈ $88.00 ≈ $264.00
Total Cost ≈ $531.00 @ 9.6 W per gallon

3rd setup (800 W): Magnetic Ballast System
2 X 400W (M135) Metal Halide Retrofit Kit ~Pulse Start (Item Code: 43-40450 (http://store.yahoo.com/lamps-now/40m1methalre.html)) $115.00 = $230.00
2 X 400 W Metal Halide Bulb for pulse start ballast ≈ $94.00 ≈ $188.00
Total Cost ≈ $418.00 @ 6.4 W per gallon

4th setup (1200 W): Magnetic Ballast System
3 X 400W (M135) Metal Halide Retrofit Kit ~Pulse Start (Item Code: 43-40450 (http://store.yahoo.com/lamps-now/40m1methalre.html)) $115.00 = $345.00
3 X 400 W Metal Halide Bulb for pulse start ballast ≈ $94.00 ≈ $282.00
Total Cost ≈ $627.00 @ 9.6 W per gallon

5th setup (500 W): Electronic Ballast System
2 X 250 W HL Metal Halide Retrofit Kit (Item Code: 43-43002 (http://store.yahoo.com/lamps-now/25methalbalk.html)) $175.00 = $350.00
2 X 250 W Metal Halide bulb ≈ $80.00 ≈ $160.00
Total Cost ≈ $510.00 @ 4 W per gallon

6th setup (750 W): Electronic Ballast System
3 X 250 W HL Metal Halide Retrofit Kit (Item Code: 43-43002 (http://store.yahoo.com/lamps-now/25methalbalk.html)) $175.00 = $525.00
3 X 250 W Metal Halide bulb ≈ $80.00 ≈ $240.00
Total Cost ≈ $765.00 @ 6 W per gallon

You can go here (http://www.reefgeek.com/products/category_indexes/1-15_lighting_sls_-_t5_retrofits.html) for some T5 retrofits to supplement the metal halides. Not too bad of a price. If you buy a pair, you could sell the pcs you have right now and it'd kinda be like gettin the T5s for free with some extra cash for the metal halides.

Also, if you do want to order the T5 retrofit or anything else from www.reefgeek.com let me know. I need to order from there and we could split the shipping.

[Henry]

here is the url http://aquarium.union.rpi.edu/rpi.html

On the left side of the page click on the articles logo with the trigger fish