Will this be good enough?

I'm going to upgrade my lighting soon and I'm trying to decide what to get. My goal is to keep mostly LPS, softies, and a few SPS. Is it possible to keep some SPS with a Tek 4x54 watt fixture over a 75 gallon or would I HAVE to go 6x54 watt. Remember I would only be getting a few SPS like maybe a birdsnest, Monticap, and some acros. Thanks in advance.

 

i would probably go with the 6X tek... once you take that sps plunge it's hard to go back, im dying for some more after i bought the monti cap, but im waiting...

 

Easily 4 bulb would do it. I have 3 different kinds of birdnest and 3 different colored monti caps all doing great under a 4 bulb 216watt fixture. Just make sure you get good bulbs and use only 1 actinic because they suck at PAR. I was growing my birdsnest under a 36 watt 2 bulb t5 combo with noticeable growth. If ou are planning on doing an all SPS tank, get the 6 bulb right away. But if you get a 4 bulb retrofit, you can always add another 2 when the time comes.

 

Yeah, it's just that $500 is a lot of money. Especially when I'm only 16, have a part time job, and have to save as much as possible for after highschool:-/

I don't plan on doing an all sps tank and for the sps I get I could just put them higher in the tank right? For bulbs I was thinking 3 12k's and 1 actinic.

 

That would be a combo to give some nice PAR and a REALLY blue look. Make sure you get name brand bulbs, it makes a difference.
I'm running:
-UVL 452nm 54w
-UVL Super Actinic 54w
-ATI AquaBlue Special 12k 54w
-GE 6500k
I like the mix of spectrums and the color from the combo is really nice.

 

Four lamps would be alright as long as you keep the pieces centrally located in the tank.
My birdsnest the green and pink are actually on the ends of the tank where my 5' lamps end.... They are only under ~150uMol/m2/sec and are doing great. M.capricornis, digitata, and seriotoporas can handle less light than other acros. I would start with them first, BUT remember that water quality is almost as important with SPS as lighting is, as is flow!!

Good luck!

 

Maybe a noob question but what does PAR stand for and what does it mean?

 

I'll let Dr Frag speak on that....that is definitely his field.

 

PAR is photosynthetically available radiation, its what plants and zooxanthallae in corals use to grow and live.
Typically in aquaria the higher the PAR the better. It is meausured in uMol/m2/sec or micro moles per meters squared per second.... Think it as going outside in a rainstorm and collecting all the rain that lands in one square meter in a second... That doesn't necassarily tell you how much rain you got from the storm it tells you how much rain is there in that second. In the wild numbers like that aren't as effective as in tanks as in tanks the numbers are consistent, so if you have say 270uMol/m2/sec on a coral you can assume it will get that all day long, and don't need to worry about DLI or daily light integral. In the wild a coral might get blasted for 2 hours with 800uMol/m2/sec and then it might be cloudy for 3 hours and it might only get 150uMol/m2/sec, and so on. So they would calculate throughout the day how much the coral REALLY gets, hence DLI..
I know this is probably sounding Greek to you so I will make it brief... Most SPS will do good in the 200-300uMol/m2/sec range. More is good, to an extent depending on the species.
There is also things called photosaturation points and photoinhibition points.
Saturation is the point when a coral is growing as much as it can for the amount of PAR it gets and no matter how much more PAR it will receive it will not grow any faster...
Photoinhibition is when you exceed the saturation point and go so high in PAR that the coral actually starts doing negatively. The zooxanthellae stop producing food and the coral slowly starves...

I think I am off track but I think I hopefully covered what PAR is!!

 

yeah.. and wow..

wait so if I have 192.5umol/m2/sec coming from 4 bulbs with 39 watts of light each on a 16 inch deep tank does this mean I can have LPS and SPS? I would love this....