lighting questions.... mh in particular

[jjackson]

I would love to put MH in my 55 Gallon tank, what are some suggestions.... 175 or 250 and what bulbs... treat me like I dont know anything (cause i dont)... thanks....

[brewercm]

2 250s. If you are going to supplement with actinic which may be a tight fit on a 55 go with 10K else you can use 20ks. Just my suggestion.

[GeorgeH]

Dependant upon the depth of the tank, you can actually get away with 175 MH. You should better qualify this with the following:

Dimensions of the tank
Sand bed depth (2' or 6") - it makes a difference
What do you plan on keeping in your tank?
Would you like to upgrade later?

If you wanted to keep the heat down, you could also use 4 VHO's in the tank that would be great if you had a deep sand bed (6") and lots of rock. While maintaining a fish and softie tank....

[prof]

And how much money are you willing to spend?

A pair of MH will run you $400 new if you buy the inexpensive retrofit kit.

I run 2 250watt Ushio 10000K and 2 96watt PC actinic on my 58 breeder tank and I am very happy with it. I am going to try Colorvue 20000K to see if I like the color better. Either way the light is excellent for SPS. I could get by with less but would not want to.

If you are not keeping SPS than you could use less light.

[matt]

You mght do some reading on mh light before making any expensive decisions, as changing the light will spark a lot of other changes in your tank, in particular the growth and bio-activity of anything photsynthetic. This means you'll typically have a higher calcium demand and a need for more water movement, assuming you have low light now. So, you should consider the overall picture of what's likely to change. You could also pretty seriously increase the heat in the tank. But, you'll enjoy the look of your tank which is really important, and you'll have much more success keeping anything photosynthetic like most corals. So I'm not trying to discourage you in any way. Just remember that most of the animals from shallower water (more light) also like strong water movement and can really use a lot of calcium.

As far as what kind of lights, you'll have more bulb options with 250s. You also have a very narrow tank, so you should mount your bulbs parallel to the tank, not perpendicular, and use reflectors that provide a more rectangular spread. The PFO reflectors designed for parallel mounting do this. If you do a reefcentral or reefs.org search for articles by Sanjay Joshi, you'll have more info on mh than most of us have read.