Lighting decision.

[Caragol]

I'm starting to plan a mushroom only tank but I can't decide on the lighting. My favorite tank in my house is my 2.5g pico with a 20w Coralife 50/50 PC bulb. The rocks just burst purple with coraline and the mushrooms pop. I want to go bigger though. I've got a 6 bulb Tek T5 over my SPS/zoa tank, but get no coraline growth on the rocks (only the glass and in the shade, too much light I guess.

So effectively I want to upsize my pico to a 20g high (24x12x16), I want lots of coraline on my rock, and I also want the mushrooms to be bright and healthy. So am I better off with a T5 system with fewer bulbs (how many?) or do I try to pick up a nice PC system? No worries about oversizing the light or tank since I already have a SPS system thriving for all that. This is for mushrooms only and will stay mushrooms only. I know PCs are kind of on the way out, but it also seems like a good match for mushrooms, so I'm not sure.

So what amount and type of lighting would you suggest for this tank?

 

[curekar]

Go with the t5's, you have such a huge range of bulbs to choose from, you can change the way the tank looks by choosing different bulbs. For shrooms you will probably be fine with 2 24W T5's. But you could go up to 4 (just make sure you get the icecap reflectores, you will not fit 4 TecII's over a 12" wide tank), but that might be too much light. I have 4 overdriven T5's over a 30, and the shrooms are mostly under rocks and in corners.

JMO

Craig

 

[Chibils]

I would go with T5s. You won't need the world's best reflectors, which is nice. T5s have better color and par, as well as MANY more bulb choices. Blue+, Geismann bulb in the 10-12k range, Fiji Procolor, Blue+ imo.

 

[Caragol]

T5 it is, but how many bulbs? The six on my other tank seems to be way too much. Curekar, can I get away with two you think? Or is that 2 with high quality individual reflectors, 4 with one big junk reflector?

 

[curekar]

I guess it depends on what you have available, you will have more options with the 4 bulb, if you put actinics and blue plus or purples you will get a very blue tank and it will still not be overly bright. So your shrooms should not run away, and will glow like crazy. But it is going to cost you more for the intial purchase and the bulbs. So you will have to decide on what you want to spend.

The advantage of 4 bulbs is that when you change one, your whole tank does not change as much. But with two, 50% of your light is coming from each bulb, so you can take your tank from blue to white with one bulb change. If the 4 bulb is too much you can change your rock around so that they can be sheltered.

I think the two bulb setup will still be fine for what you want to stock, regardless of good/not so good reflectors (but get reflectors). All of my shrooms are hanging around the bottom of my tank, which is fine because I have other LPS and softies in there, but if you are going to do a shrooms only you don't want to overdo the light, unless you want to put florida rics in, they like much more light than regular shrooms. If you are going to put Fl. rics in go with 4 bulbs.

Craig

 

[Caragol]

I like the rics, but am not in love with them. I never had good luck with them, tried some green ones a few times. Everything else seems to multiply all over. I would like some nicer morphs of rhodactis though, not sure of their requirements.

Thanks for the advice!