Quote Originally Posted by matt
1 400W will work fine, don't worry. Your tank will be brighter in the middle than at the ends, but so what? On my old 45 breeder, a 36"X18" tank, I used 2 175W bulbs and the light was outstanding. If you do go with 250W bulbs, the only reason I brought up the T5s was for actinic support, i.e color. If you wanted to avoid any actinics, I'd suggest 2 phoenix 14k DE bulbs, and get the lumenarc DE reflectors
Thanks Matt, I'm not to worried about the light at the ends. I plan to keep some lower light stuff on the outer edges anyway. I plan to go with the 400w 14k aquaconnect bulb. Found them a www.aquaristics.com. A little pricey but they're the only true hqi se bulb out there and are designed to run on hqi ballast without worry of short life or loss of kelvin. Sanjay on rc testet them and they had best rating of all 400w bulbs.