Before too many recommendations are made we need to know if you intend to make both reef tanks, or just one. If only one, which one? Reef/non-reef makes a big difference in lighting and flow costs (reefs require more of both than fish only tanks). The recommendations I make below are based on the assumption that you are building a reef system.
For flow you could get a couple Vortech MP40s, but they are pricey. A much less expensive alternative are Hydor Koralia power heads. They take up more room in the tank, but work well and are fairly easy to maintain.
A protein skimmer sufficient for a system that large would be expensive. Some brands to consider are Euro Reef, Octopus and ASM. They will give you a basic idea of what you expect/look for.
Lighting is going to be expensive for tanks that large no matter how you slice it. For a T5 setup you're looking at a retrofit or prebuilt fixture. A retrofit will need a canopy (or something to mount the endcaps to), ballasts and bulbs/reflectors. Prebuilt fixtures can be found at/ordered from our local sponsors. There are too many to list them all here and the price range can be large. For example, ATI makes very high quality fixtures with very good cooling for a high price whereas Current-USA makes a decent fixture that works/cools well for quite a bit less.
For Metal Halides there are a lot of options, but I don't know enough about MH equipment to give much detail. However, if you run large MH lights, you may need to add a chiller to your tank which is a costly proposition.
That's a start on hardware. One can go absolutely nuts with hardware in this hardware, but those are the main hardware items.
Last edited by Rychek; Thu, 3rd Sep 2009 at 10:15 AM.
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