How is this for stacking rock?

personaly I have about 450 of compact lighting thats all i could afford

 

450? watts I'm guessing, and is that a lot I don't know but would like to find out more about properly lighting a reef.

 

im not really that big on metal halides. If it were me id go with t5's. especially in a 125 considering that it isnt very deep. I run a 8 lamp t5ho tek light over my 90 gallon...which is deeper than a 125 and i have SPS corals and clams growing all the way on the sand bed! Metal halides are hot! so you may end up needing a chiller. Metal halide lamps dont last as long, they are more expensive to replace the lamps, and most people use some sort of fluorescent tubes as actinic supplementation lighting whether it be PCs, T5's or VHO's along side the metal halides. So just explore your options before jumping into a lighting system. A lot of people feel strongly about using metal halides as the only way to keep very high light demanding corals happy and will swer by metal halides....I have used just about every lighting system there is available, whether it be on my personal tank or on a clients tank and what i have found is that there are many ways to skin a cat! Now dont get me wrong metal halides can be great and the reason many people recommend them is because they have a good track record....but just realize there are downsides to them as i mentioned a few above and you do have other options.

 

I like it too. Just, as said before, make sure that it is stable.

 

i love the piece on the right, looks like a good place for a pretty coral!

 

I went with a single MH retrofit kit for my 58 gallon because my canopy is a a weird size. It is 35 1/4" long and most fixtures and retrofits for T-5's and Power Compacts are either 24" or 36". The MH fits perfect and I use 24" Power Compacts as actinics.

This is what my canopy looks like:




Just giving you some ideas because when I started out a few months ago, I too was completely frustrated with lighting.

 

Looks good, will look better once theres stuff in it. How wide is the tank?

 

I think it's 18"w72"L24"h

 

These pics help alot. Have some Q's
1- do you have vents in your canopy or does the fan just blow the air around inside the canopy?
2- I just went to home depot and picked up the wood for my canopy I'm going to build, and for a 72L tank lighting system how much room for the width of the lights should I allow for?
3-What lighting would you suggest for me? I'm wanting to start with basic corals at first then move to some of the harder to keep ones once I get things going right , but don't want to have to upgrade lighting when I do start keeping harder corals, I also want to keep the system around $500-1000 Thanks for the replys

 

You shuld decide on your lights before custom building a canopy. This way you have the dimensions of all the parts you plan to use and you wont go kicking yourself later for not leaving enough height for the light you want to fit.