40 Breeder lighting, primarily softies

[fauxjargon]

I'm setting up a 40 breeder. My plan is to have a fairly low aquascape, with most of my coral sitting on small rocks on the bottom of the tank, with large rocks supporting a few LPS and maybe SPS closer to the lights - so basically all the softies would be 15" or so underwater and the other corals would be 4-12" underwater.

I'm trying to minimize the wattage involved with running this tank and am thinking of using 24" t5ho bulbs instead of 36" bulbs. The bulbs would be maybe 4-6" off the surface of the tank and I would use 4 bulbs with good reflectors.

Due to the kind of aquascape I want to do, my high light corals would all be in the center 2' of the tank, so from their point of view it would be no different than being in a 2' long tank with 24" bulbs - plenty of people do that so I'm not worried about the coral in the middle suffering.

However, I don't want it to look stupid with bad lighting around the edges of the tank. Does anyone have pictures of a tank with lights a foot shorter than the tank? The power savings are huge - 60 watts of lighting costs a lot around here.

EDIT: The ballasts and reflectors that I have are 36" - however the reflectors are easy to modify to mount 24" bulbs in them without impacting their utility with 36" bulbs - so to go from 24" to 36" bulbs or vice versa won't cost me anything except bulbs and a few minutes DIY. The ballasts will drive either bulb.

 

[1st timer]

you could stagger them, they could overlap in the center by 1 foot. It would give the very center more light and the ends less but not quite dark. The advantage is you could leave your reflectors intact so experimenting would be easy, if staggering or centering 24" lamps doesn't 'light' your fire just slap the 36" back in.

 

[ati70cutlass]

4x39 watt t5 vho. i have 3 different set ups in this config. works just fine

 

[reefmanmatt]

i run a 175 22,000k over my 40 breeders and i can grow about 10-12 new heads of any zo i try on a plug in a month . colonies can be trimed bare and will completly cover again in three weeks . just letting you know what others are running . i have a friend who runs 24" t-5's (8 of them) over a 50 breeder and he doesnt get half the growth i do , honestly . we run the same pumps and levels in tank for comparison , he has more fish . i can post / send you pictures of both setups if you have questions . btw, im running hand bent white aluminum spraypainted "reflectors" (think gutters)and these are my results.... try that with a t5 . i have heard of running two of the 70 watt diy brinks fixtures over them too but have no experience with this topic .