aqualight pro

[reeferwanabe]

I did not get a response from my previous lighting question so I'll pose it another way.
What do you think of this light? it has 3 150 mh and 4 96 watt actinic. I think it is probably strong enough for most corals. Is there some corals that need more?
I'm thinking I should have gone with the 3 250mh. the 150's are 10,000 hqi.

 

[Phyl]

How deep is the tank? If it is 24" I would go with 3x250s. I've got 3x400 over my 2' tall 180. If the tank is 18", give or take then the 150s are "right sized" for the application. That would cover the gammut from clams on the bottom to high need SPS.

 

[reeferwanabe]

tank is a 150 24' deep already hooked up with the light before I discovered you guys.
I guess I could change my bulbs down the road to 14 or 20,000 .
how long do you leave your mh lights on?

 

[Phyl]

You'll get the greatest PAR (useable light) from 10K as far as growth and penetration are concerned. The higher you go in the Kelvin scale (color) the less PAR you typically see. So you may want to stick to the 14Ks, unless you don't like the color. Then move to 12 or 14 K bulbs. The 20Ks are almost always too blue for a display tank, though they make excellent "color" bulbs.

 

[DaveK]

The bulbs you have in your fixture are double ended. Usually fixtures using such bulbs also have a decent reflector behind them. In effect, the effective light you get out of them is usually a lot more than you would get out of a similar fixture with single ended bulbs.

You could purchase the parts and upgrade the fixture to 250w bulbs, but that would also produce a lot more heat. I don't think you really need to do that. What you have should be able to support most things you want in a tank. Even if you want SPS corals and clams, you could place them higher if the tank if needed.

The 10000 K bulbs you have are fine, especially with the actinic PCs. If you wanted more blue you could upgrade the bulbs to 14K as Phyl suggested.