Im filling up my entire 20 long with sps corals. Right now im about half full and currently running 4 24w t5's. Should i take and put 2 150w retros in the canopy instead for better color/growth or should i stick to t5's? only reason i was thinking 2 150w's is because the tank is 30 inches long and im going to go from corner to corner with the corals. Also the lights will be about 1 ft off the water.
20 long sps reef lighting help
- Thread starter wku5
- Start date
Mr. Wiggles
Member
I have a 150w MH over my 20L and most areas are lit well enough to keep SPS even on the edges. I have a Monti Digi on the side and it is fine as well as LPS and softies. I would try out one MH pendant and then upgrade to a second depending on your stocking plans. If you keep the T5 retro in there you may not even need to have the 2 MH lamps.
stevedola
Master of my domain
why not add 2 more 2' T5s and stagger them so you have full coverage.
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Just a thought. I bet your color would be better than the 2 150w MHs...heat transfer would be less too.
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Just a thought. I bet your color would be better than the 2 150w MHs...heat transfer would be less too.
stevedola
Master of my domain
In the right reflector you could prolly make that work. Small tanks with Mh are tough if they are odd lengths. The coverage of the bulb gets shaded in the corners. 2 150w with t5s would be better. I still miss my dusk/dawn effect from my actinics.
Before you jump to the conclusion that MH is better, check out 'reef in the sky' in the SPS section. I think people get hung up on Mh vs. T5s and forget that its more about your dedication to husbandry and planning. Ive seen great equipment lists with lack luster results. Either lighting is more than sufficient to supply the corals with the energy needed to grow and be prolific.
Before you jump to the conclusion that MH is better, check out 'reef in the sky' in the SPS section. I think people get hung up on Mh vs. T5s and forget that its more about your dedication to husbandry and planning. Ive seen great equipment lists with lack luster results. Either lighting is more than sufficient to supply the corals with the energy needed to grow and be prolific.
ive read alot on t5 vs mh and basically from what ive gathered both are the same "IF" you dose for all kinds of amino acids and everything else which adds up more time and money for t5's. Im sure i may be wrong because im not a professional about lighting at all. Its just about smaller tank i see that has sps only is usually mh, whether mh works best or not. I had a 250 on it but it was too much and i just got the t5's instead. My corals live just fine under it but im wanting them to grow better than what they are. My pink birdsnest grows super duper fast but then again itll frow fast under anything. Im needing my higher end stuff to grow faster because im wanting to sell frags soon. So im just trying to get my tank the best possible to do that.
I really don’t see why 4 T5’s is sufficient. IMO I think you should be fine w/ what you have. I think the possible benefit you may receive with a 150 MH (if any) wouldn’t be enough to justify changing light fixtures. I’d play with bulb combo’s before I switch lighting if I were you.
if my phoenix 14k in my 250w was too much, wouldnt an xm 20k be too much?
stevedola
Master of my domain
I dont know who is telling you or where you received your information about T5 lighting needing amino acids or supplements but that couldnt be farther from the truth. If anything, AA dosing has been disputed by many to have little to no effect on corals regardless the lighting. I personally have had both MH tanks and T5 lit tanks. I think that T5s work well if not better with shallow reef tanks and smaller water volume than MH. You can go ahead and use 2 150w mh bulbs over your tank and get good growth/color but I think youd be better served utilizing 6 T5 24" bulbs. Its half the amount of wattage being used but better par coverage, less heat, and better color combos. If you could use 1 Mh to cover your tank Id say go for it but I have seen the lumenarcs spread on a 30" long tank and was not impressed with the coverage to the corners.
Darkstar22
New member
I have a 250w MH 14k Phoenix in a pendant over my 20L and it's not too much light. The ballast is a Lumatek digital ballast. I get great light coverage!
allsps40
New member
I have a 250 phoenix 14k over my 40 breeder and love it. Give great coverage even over my 36 inch tank Works way better than my 2 150s did, with 2 150 phoenix it was to much. In your case Just try add 2 more T5s with good reflectors. I have seen some nice tanks with only T5. If I was to try T5 it would be on a smaller tank like a 20L.
cthedaytrader
Active member
If you search my name you might find very similar threads that I did a few years agao when I went through this same exact debate lol.
Here is a link to my 20g which has now been upgraded. I grew the entire tank from frags, which I am pretty happy about considering some of the tanks that people simply put mature corals into their nanos and call them done lol
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1828563
For nano 20g Longs are nice dimensions for giving a look of a larger tank.
When I started my tank I went with t5 only a teck 4 bulb fixture. I wanted to cost, the heat and the coverage benefit for dealing with the odd length of the 20G Longs
I really didnt give it much of chance, I found that a lot of my sps looked pastel and bleached, but I really only ran the the t5 for a couple of months, so I really didnt give them a chance to acclimate. One problem that I did notice, is with low light corals or even sps, the 12 inch depth and even less with the sand bed made it very difficult to shade zoos lps, etc and they were very unhappy under the t5s.
I switched to a sunpod, and immediately my corals seemed to color up better, and my zoos started coming back (that had really shrivelled under the t5). But the 150W sunpod had no supplemental lights (LEDS were nice for night viewing but thats about it on the SUnPOD). And the sunpod created a spotlight affect and the edges on my tank were not getting enough lighting.
So I bit the bullet and built my own hanging hood and went with to PFO mini pendants 150W and 2 24inch VHO Super Actinics.
Again the two 150s started bleaching a lot of the corals, and once again zoos were unhappy. I am sure I could have tried to acclimate better but I did have quiet high over the tank and even built longer hanging arms to raise it up higher. I then decided to take one pendant out and went with the 1x150W MH, (started with Phoenix, and then went to Radiums, both are great bulbs but I found the Radiums were just a little better for overall growth and color) ith the 2 VHOs.
This is really when my tank started to thrive growth was great and colors were at their best, but there were some issues. (I also added a Ca reacot but that was a bit later)
As corals grew the edges got shaded a lot and I had problems with even low light corals on the side, heat was a constant issue even with the room ac.
I have now upgraded and after the same debate, I went with an ATI dimmable PM on my new tank, for the obvious reaosns, coverage over my odd dimension new tank lol, heat, and cost, and the look of the fixture too.
I am very happy with it so far but my corals have not all returned to the same color they were in my 20G Long, I have bleached a lot of corals and some are ocming back some arent but the tank is new and I vowed to be more patient with it. I will say this part of me thinks that if I had gone with the Radiums VHO the sps might look a little better than they do now but who knows. I do love the fixture the ability to dim it is amazing and has made it easier to acclimate my corals (after my intial mistake with the dimming and running the fixture at 100% for a few days thinking it was dimmed lol).
Overall my opinion is this and some may agree:
First:
T5 tanks and MH (lets say Radium tanks because those are my favorite bulbs and MH tanks). Will look different. The corals tend to have an overall different look, but personally it still looks amazing, on both.
Second:
I think the reason people say you need to dose xyz and do this and that is with t5 tanks, is that most of the top t5 tanks that I have seen on here tend to do that, but I think the real reason is MH is still a bit more forgiving for lack of a better term. Meaning with t5 I think you might need to make sure you run a good fixture with good bulbs, the right combination and have good water quality, and proper coral placement, your you might bleach them etc. While with MH it just seems to be more forgiving and your corals will still look very colorful etc. I am not saying its easy to keep a MH tank by anny means either.
I think in the end whatever you decide the realy key is to keep the tank stable. Use quality equipment and keep up with your husbrandry and if you look around here there are so many great tanks that implore so many different strategies.
One other piece of advice in the 20G Long is be carefull with overstocking it with sps. In the end that became brutal for me, the coral warfare was crazy, working in the tank was annoying as I constantly broke sps, knocked them over, and I really couldnt clean the glass in most areas to even take decent pics.
Good luck, and I would be happy to answer any other questions if I can.
Here is a link to my 20g which has now been upgraded. I grew the entire tank from frags, which I am pretty happy about considering some of the tanks that people simply put mature corals into their nanos and call them done lol
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1828563
For nano 20g Longs are nice dimensions for giving a look of a larger tank.
When I started my tank I went with t5 only a teck 4 bulb fixture. I wanted to cost, the heat and the coverage benefit for dealing with the odd length of the 20G Longs
I really didnt give it much of chance, I found that a lot of my sps looked pastel and bleached, but I really only ran the the t5 for a couple of months, so I really didnt give them a chance to acclimate. One problem that I did notice, is with low light corals or even sps, the 12 inch depth and even less with the sand bed made it very difficult to shade zoos lps, etc and they were very unhappy under the t5s.
I switched to a sunpod, and immediately my corals seemed to color up better, and my zoos started coming back (that had really shrivelled under the t5). But the 150W sunpod had no supplemental lights (LEDS were nice for night viewing but thats about it on the SUnPOD). And the sunpod created a spotlight affect and the edges on my tank were not getting enough lighting.
So I bit the bullet and built my own hanging hood and went with to PFO mini pendants 150W and 2 24inch VHO Super Actinics.
Again the two 150s started bleaching a lot of the corals, and once again zoos were unhappy. I am sure I could have tried to acclimate better but I did have quiet high over the tank and even built longer hanging arms to raise it up higher. I then decided to take one pendant out and went with the 1x150W MH, (started with Phoenix, and then went to Radiums, both are great bulbs but I found the Radiums were just a little better for overall growth and color) ith the 2 VHOs.
This is really when my tank started to thrive growth was great and colors were at their best, but there were some issues. (I also added a Ca reacot but that was a bit later)
As corals grew the edges got shaded a lot and I had problems with even low light corals on the side, heat was a constant issue even with the room ac.
I have now upgraded and after the same debate, I went with an ATI dimmable PM on my new tank, for the obvious reaosns, coverage over my odd dimension new tank lol, heat, and cost, and the look of the fixture too.
I am very happy with it so far but my corals have not all returned to the same color they were in my 20G Long, I have bleached a lot of corals and some are ocming back some arent but the tank is new and I vowed to be more patient with it. I will say this part of me thinks that if I had gone with the Radiums VHO the sps might look a little better than they do now but who knows. I do love the fixture the ability to dim it is amazing and has made it easier to acclimate my corals (after my intial mistake with the dimming and running the fixture at 100% for a few days thinking it was dimmed lol).
Overall my opinion is this and some may agree:
First:
T5 tanks and MH (lets say Radium tanks because those are my favorite bulbs and MH tanks). Will look different. The corals tend to have an overall different look, but personally it still looks amazing, on both.
Second:
I think the reason people say you need to dose xyz and do this and that is with t5 tanks, is that most of the top t5 tanks that I have seen on here tend to do that, but I think the real reason is MH is still a bit more forgiving for lack of a better term. Meaning with t5 I think you might need to make sure you run a good fixture with good bulbs, the right combination and have good water quality, and proper coral placement, your you might bleach them etc. While with MH it just seems to be more forgiving and your corals will still look very colorful etc. I am not saying its easy to keep a MH tank by anny means either.
I think in the end whatever you decide the realy key is to keep the tank stable. Use quality equipment and keep up with your husbrandry and if you look around here there are so many great tanks that implore so many different strategies.
One other piece of advice in the 20G Long is be carefull with overstocking it with sps. In the end that became brutal for me, the coral warfare was crazy, working in the tank was annoying as I constantly broke sps, knocked them over, and I really couldnt clean the glass in most areas to even take decent pics.
Good luck, and I would be happy to answer any other questions if I can.
divewsharks
Active member
I would say its all preference, if you want MH get them; but let it be because you prefer shimmer or whatever not because your T5's can't do the job, as they are just as capable.
The beauty of T5's is the ability to tweak the color to how you want it, there are many bulbs to choose from.
Additionally depending on what you want to keep, having lower light on the sides may not be a bad thing. I recently set up a 20L frag tank with LED's (my main tank is T5's). I chose 24" modules as that way i could keep various LPS and such who prefer lower light on the edges.
hth
The beauty of T5's is the ability to tweak the color to how you want it, there are many bulbs to choose from.
Additionally depending on what you want to keep, having lower light on the sides may not be a bad thing. I recently set up a 20L frag tank with LED's (my main tank is T5's). I chose 24" modules as that way i could keep various LPS and such who prefer lower light on the edges.
hth
Darkstar22
New member
My MH is about 10 inches off the surface of the 20L. It is a PFO Pendant 250w Phoenix 14k, Lumatek digital ballast.
Darkstar22
New member
absolutely no bleaching problems or heating problems.
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