Best lighting for 220g Sps Tank

I really like Metal Halides. I would have a very hard time switching back to T5's. I would do 250's if I were you.

 

250 watt at 24 inches will work fine for SPS.

I would do a combo of 10000K-15000K SE MH lighing for maximum PAR and supplement using actinic T-5's or VHO's for color.

Whoever thinks T-5's penetrate more PAR through the water column then MH's is crazy. Especially is you are comparing T-5's to 400w MH's..

I have seen nice reefs using only T-5's, but they are usually shallow (less then 24").

 

Gotta jump on one bandwagon or another

Im sure most reputable coral distributors and stores that have tons of money invested use halides (Ora, Tyree......), i dont see a reason to fight the trend.

To me the biggest downside of halides are the ugly fixtures they come in. While the t5 fixtures look nice.

 

I would go with MH, I have only used T5s so far and do like them. I have grown clams and sps with them with great coloration. However, I feel MHs are the closest thing we can get to the sun right now. I also want that shimmer effect. Now, with your tank, You will probably want more then 2 250w MH. I know a guy with a 5x3x2 tank and he used 3 400w mH with galaxy ballasts and 14K sps bulbs and his tank looked awesome. Your problem will be finding a fixture with either 400w MH or 3 bulbs that isn't 6 feet long. Your best bet may be to make a hood that fits your style and then make a retro kit.

 

Go with the Geissman fixture, 2 X 250 MH with whatever supplemental T5's......all the way!!!!!

 

250W Will be fine.

 

For the depth, 250s will be fine, but at 5 feet long and 3 feet wide, you will need a third light IMO to cover the added area. What many people with tank dimensions like that is actually stagger them. So you can have one towards the front middle, one towards the back middle then another towards the front middle forming kind of like a triangle.

 

I would go t5 less heat and electricity more bulb combo options,more coverage to name a few reasons.

 

Agreed, for a 5ft + tank.

 

What are you basing this on?

PM me lol.

What T5s and halides were you using?

That depends on the reflector to a large degree. The more narrow the reflector, the more narrowly focused it will be and deeper the penetration. Albeit not have as much horizontal coverage.

+1 The Bulb combos are really great. With some T&E you can get pretty close to whatever color you want, generrally speaking w/ T5s.

Don't lump all T5s together-like a generic "T5s DROOL/MH RULES GO TEAM!!" If you say one is better than the other, please be specific (bulb, reflector, # of bulbs, ballast, cooling, height above tank ect.) With T5 combos, reflectors and fixtures there can be as much difference between them as "a hundai and a vette," oddyssa vs. ATI or Icecap for example. Until I see someone that has solid PAR readings, coral growth rates and energy savings statistics from a perfectly controlled experiment, I'm not believing that either type of lighting is vastly better than the other- not just trash talking T5s or MH.

It really is like apples to oranges. There is a huge variation even within the two groups. Some people had a bad apple, and then a good orange. Suddenly all apples are crap and oranges kick their sorry red arses any day of the week, when they never had one of these- Japanese apples I upgraded from PC to MH and went back because I hated it. It was the cheapest MH retro I could find and melted my center brace. Is PC better than MH? Yes, in that instance, w/ that shaped tank and that supposed "cooling" system. Is it generall though?

In short, you probably could use T5s in a 30" tank, IMO. Just have more bulbs and high quality narrow reflectors. More bulbs would cancel out the benefit of cheaper bulb replacement costs with t5s though. But, it would be more energy efficient (*probably*) and have more customizable color options. I also don't know how gun-ho you are on the shimmer effect...

If you go MH, you could try a lower kelvin (3 250W iwasaki 65s maybe?) and have some florescents to blue it out. Like actinic VHOs or ATI blue+. Theres a local reefer that runs that combo; the growth and color is outstanding.