Mixed Lighting

I have 4x65 watt PCs on my 90 reef. I'm looking to upgrade, but I have a couple questions. 1) Would it be possible to get around 200 watts of t5 or halide and enhance my lighting and grow SPS with around 2.8 WPG of PC and 2.5 WPG of t5/halide? 2) How much does a used fixture of this sort generally go for?

 

I had same set up 4x65 watt PC for my 55G but now i have that + two 96 watt t5 and it cost me $110 for the set up new.

 

Are you growing SPS?

 

How many watts of Halide/t5 should I add to my lighting.

 

My mistake i think my t5 are 55 Watt.

The reason i got them is beacuse of my Clam wasnt doing well. The sec i turned those t5's on the clam loved it.

I am not growing any SPS but am going to soon. They told me i could grow anything with as much light as i have.


Im growing leather, Enemies, Xenia, Some orange Small tree looking thing, and tons of other things.

Edit
I may have lied are SPS trumpet coral? Im growing some of those, and some hard coral that looks like green mold in a way but its growing in a rock thing.

 

trumpet coral is LPS. I don't know how much light to add. I'm on a 400-500 dollar budget for the lighting and fuge.

 

Get the largest t5 setup that will go over your tank then you won't have any future limitations when it comes to which corals you can get. Then you can sell of the pc's and get a LITTLE bit of your money back. This is probably the best t5 fixture for your tank. 48 inch Current USA Nova Extreme 8x54W T5HO with 4 Lunar Lights

The fuge should cost barely anything, just spare tank with a hole drilled into it with a bulkhead, a feed pump (or a T off of your return), and a clip on light fixture 10$ and a 10$ bulb.

 

I run a 4x54 48 inch Tek T5 lighting system in my 5 foot 125 g and I have both SPS, LPS, shrooms, and a carpet anemome (I have run the Tek system for almost 3 years now). For T5's best bang for the buck is the Tek systems. When moving into T5's you no longer look at watts per gallon, because in order to grow corals it is the par amount that counts. With t5's you have many bulb combos to find the perfect light color for the tank.

 

That fixture is a little on the expensive side james37128. If I could find something like that used or a little cheaper that would be something I would go for. What exactly is par amount?

 

for each brand of bulb you can find out the par rating (useful photosyntetic light). For the most part the 6000-6500K have the highest par ratings and the 22k have the lowest rating. Different brand bulbs do vary (for the par amounts on may bulbs you can go to canreef.com (i'm pretty sure I saw the ratings on reefcentral as well) and look under the lighting section), so it is a important part. Your tank is a 90 G so I am assuming 4 foot, so you could get away with 4x54 48 inch unit, but I would recommend the Tek unit over the Nova or glo system as I have actually seen the light output differences. If you can afford it I would go with the 6 bulb unit just for faster growth, but like I said, i've got a 5 foot tank and have the 4 bulb unit and I've had great growth. I have recently added 2 Glo hot5's (it was either glos or novas I was deciding on, so I looked at other peoples tanks and set up the 2 side by side and the glos were better. In comparison to my tek unit the Teks are a lot brighter then the Glos) just for some extra punch in the growth department, as I have recently added over a dozen new SPS frags to my system over the last couple of months.