hi, right im getting a new tank soon which will be 36" x 24" x 24" , which works out around 340 litres, im going to be getting a BTA so was wondering should i go with a 150W halide or 250W with the tank being so deep, also the tank has a glass brace bar across the middle, would this effect the halide much with it being a glass brace bar or are the only effected with black brace bars?
Having a deeper tank requires different considerations when lighting for your corals. you can do two different things off the top of my head:
- buy a more powerful light that will penetrate deeper but may also cause heat damage to upper level life
- arrange all high light need corals as close to the top of the tank as you can with corals with lesser light requirements closer to the bottom. This is cheaper as does not require the sun sitting over your tank but limits the arrangement of the tank to where some things have to go rather than where you think they would look best.
either way should work fine depending on what you feel is best
Ok Mark, Just been discussing this with Weathermen (I think that was his ID).You say your tank is 36" long that is 3 foot, right. What type of tank are you thinking of keeping reef or fish only with or without rock?? If it is fish only then a metal halide is generally not necessary but if reef then halide is certainly worth thinking about. The metal halide units typically can be thought of as giving enough light to a 2'x2'x2' volume of water, outside of this the light intensity is on the weak side. Your tank being three foot will require two units for a uniform amount of light and with the two units the question about the brace dispappears (although even with one unit the brace will not significantly affect lighting). Depending on what corals you wish to keep determines the power and colour of the bulb you buy. SPS generally need the most light so a dual 250W would be ideal but then you also need lots of water movement. If you can reply with specifics about your ideas for the tank, the types of corals you want to keep etc then I can give you some more specific advice.
hi, thanks for the replies, ive just had a look through weathermans thread aswell, it gives me some good ideas, ive already got a rio 180 with about 30 kilos of live rock an a few corals, everythin will be moving to the new tank once that is set up, i mainly want a bubble tip anemone and zoanthids, nothin that is to difficult. im just having trouble trying to find somewhere that sells 3ft metal halides with either 2x150w bulbs or 2x250w bulbs that aint to expensive. im going to have around 25xs turnover in there aswell.
/www.1st4aquatics.com/90cm-2-x-150w-...ubes-3117-p.asp
