How Much Lighting For A 72 Gallon Reef Set-up?

[KeeperOfFishyPeace]

I am planning in the future to have a 72 gallon reef tank and was wondering how much lighting i would need. I'd like to keep soft corals, polyps, mushrooms, some leathers, LPS's, so basically everything except SPS and clams. I would like to have a compact fluorescent fixture, because being a student (not even college student) i don't have money to put into metal halide. I was looking at a Current Orbit system that has 260w of lighting. Would this be enough? Any other suggestions?

 

[SkiFletch]

Would be just fine for softies and MOST LPS. Things like echinopora, acanthestrea, and blastomussa might struggle from the LPS area, but most others should be fine. Current makes some good quality fixtures so good choice there. If money's tight, dont forget to consider buying used, you can save a ton of dough that way. What part of canada are you from?

 

[KeeperOfFishyPeace]

Thats good to hear! And, what if the mentioned LPS corals are placed near the lighting, would that be sufficient lighting for them, just a question. Thanks for responding so fast. I'm from the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, NO SNOW

 

[SkiFletch]

Ah Toronto, not that far from my home in Buffalo . There's a really really active reef club in toronto. I forget the name of it, but I know they do a lot of frag swaps nd other things in the saltwater community. If you can find them via gogle or some other method, they might really be able to help you out with used goods and hand me down lighting on the cheap . The corals I mentioned might do OK under power compacts. They would survive just fine at the top of the rock stack, but don't expect fast growth rates out of them

 

[superman]

I'd even look into VHO lighting, the coloration of the actinic of VHO bulbs I haven't seen the equal of in Power Compact lights.