Lighting for lionfish and eel tank?

[imolaragazzo]

I'm putting together a new system and one of the tanks I will be setting up will house a dwarf lionfish. I've read that they need subdued lighting but could never find how much "subdued" actually means. What are you guys running on your tanks that have lionfish?

The main thing I'd like to accomplish with this tank is having a good environment for the fish, if I'm able to maintain coral with the lighting required for the lionfish that would be great, but I will also have a separate ten gallon tank (both hooked up to the same sump) that will house many corals.

Also, this will be for a 55 gallon tank, I was looking at some metal halide fixtures, came cross a nice 500 watt one ( 2 x 250w ) that would cover this tank well but I'm afraid that might be too much lighting. I could go with T5, maybe LED if I can find a good deal on something. There will be live rock in this tank also, I imagine it will be okay under subdued lighting? Thanks for the help.

 

[reef_doug]

What type of coral?

LPS will do fine under T5, that would be my choice.

 

[imolaragazzo]

What type of coral?

LPS will do fine under T5, that would be my choice.

Yah LPS seems like all I would be able to do. Just browsing around for T5 fixtures, the fishneedit one is 108 watts, which would probably be barely able to keep anything except for the lowest of lows for light requirements unless i went with two of those fixtures. Edit: I would probably get the 4x54 w T5 fixture if I went with all T5

But this got me thinking, what if I were to do half of the tank MH and the other half T5 since there is already a center brace on this tank. I don't think I've ever seen that, but I might be able to achieve a cool effect of having a bit of an eerie place for the lionfish or eel to hang out in and also have an area with corals and such where they can swim through as well.