MH or T5 for a 210 gallon tank

DrHank

New member
I'm in the process of setting up a 96X24X21.5 tall 210 gallon reef tank. I'm thinking of 4 - 150w or 175w MH retro's. I already have 4 - 54w T5 Finnex fixture (that has been doing fine on my 110 gallon) and could add another four to six T5's. My reef is mixed LPS and softies with a few easy SPS thrown in for good measure.

I'd appreciate your opinion. I must also say that I do miss the shimmer of MH (you don't get that with T5s. Also, what about a mix of T5s with MH.
 
Most 6' tanks it doesn't really make sense to do T5s becuase of the number of bulbs required compared to MH. However, on a 8' tank you have the luxary of using 48" bulbs end to end and can make that more economical to run than 4 MH. Doing a nice retro ( don't know how good finnex relfectors perform ), I'd have no problem doing T5s on the size tank you describe. Also with retro, you can start out with 2 sets of 4 and can always add more rows as your real estate for SPS/acros increases ( if ever ).

My personal tastes, I really could care less about shimmer lines so can't offer any help there....
 
Re: MH or T5 for a 210 gallon tank

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9860693#post9860693 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by DrHank
I'm in the process of setting up a 96X24X21.5 tall 210 gallon reef tank. I'm thinking of 4 - 150w or 175w MH retro's. I already have 4 - 54w T5 Finnex fixture (that has been doing fine on my 110 gallon) and could add another four to six T5's. My reef is mixed LPS and softies with a few easy SPS thrown in for good measure.

I'd appreciate your opinion. I must also say that I do miss the shimmer of MH (you don't get that with T5s. Also, what about a mix of T5s with MH.
OK doc here's d deal- I'm not a t5 fan, so why even bother setting up a tank over 200 gallons with tons of space if u r not using MHS. I run 3x400w 20 k MH's with actinic supps. my advice is use your existing t5 as supps(actinic) and retrofit 3 mh's. Eventually u will need them so wht not do it right from the get go.;)
 
exactly what gasman said, then you'd have the best of both worlds, i was running t5's over my 75g and really missed the shimmer from the halides so my current set up is halide/t5 combo and i would do a minimum of 250w halides.
 
Considering that you are placing only a few SPS in the tank, you might get away with just buying 2 MHs and using T5s as supplement. Just place the SPS under the MHs.
 
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