What kind of lighting for a 100g?

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It depends on if you want to keep corals or fish only If you want to keep fish then your regular fluorescents will do just fine. If you want to do corals than it is a good decision to get metal halides for that size of tank you would want about 8 watts a gallon so I think three 250 Watt 14000K metal halides would do fine but if halides are out of your range you could do power compacts.
 
Halides :crazy:

Whats the price tag on those.

I think I want to keep corals, they are so damned gorgeous. I was inspired by a pic in National Geographic, all the pinks and blues :wub: Im guessing they are expensive as hell aswell :-(

--Dan
 
Whilst 8wpg is very nice its not essentiual. I had a single 400w halide over my 100 gallontank. giving 10k output so 4epg. This was more than enough to keep acroporas etc.

wgp is very innacurate in tanks because of the tanks dimensions. a tall tank needs strong lights, a low tank doesnt.
 
I had a feeling that somebody sid that i new they were right but wouldn't one bulb not give very much coverage on a four foot tank.
 
Halides won't cost that much really. Suppose you have two 250W halides that are on for 8 hours a day. That turns out at what, 4 kW hours per day (or 4 units in the uk). I think I remember a thread somewhere where it was calulated that Halides only put the electric bill up by about £5 to £10 a quarter.

Halides are extremely expensive if you go and buy them from an LFS in prebuilt units.

However, if like me you go on ebay and get old stock from lighing installers you pay a total of £70 for two 150W including ballast, ignitor and capacitor (and bulbs which at 4500K were perfect for my FW plants but you can just get a marine colour bulb and off you go).

If you at all fancy a little DIY and plan on a custom hood, Halides are in the long run the best cost option. Think about when it comes to changing the bulbs after a year. Two halides will cost around what, £75 or so if you search well. To get the same brightness from T5 tubes, or power compacts would require a lot of tubes. When it comes to replacing them the cost soon soars up (they're like £15 to 20 each over here four of them will not give the same power as a couple of Halides).

I know Halides seem a real pain when you first look at them, but the benefits are huge. I seem to recall Nav (may have been someone else) saying that while his coral grew well under T5, once he changed to Halide the colours really came out.
 
cichlid freak said:
This is your metal halide lighting yes they are expensive and you will pay a fortune for electricity to run them. You could do poer compacts but correct me if i'm wrong I think the SPS corals and the clams need metal halides. I'm keeping some LPS corals under compacts but i think that LPS is your limit on fluorescents.

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/Product/NavR...m?N=2004+113178
Mh lighting dont cause a fortune on your electric bill. From putting up my 2x 250w SE Mh's has only knocked my electric bill up around $3-$5 more a month. If you run Magnitic ballasts that made my electic go up around $20 more. It is possiable to do Sps and clams under pcs but can get frustrating at times. Some sps do fine under pc lighting like some monti's but for the most part they do best under Mh's. Now as far as what lighting would be best for 100g it depends on the demetions of the tank amd what you plan on keeping.
 

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