A little lighting advice.....please

I have just finished building my stand, and collecting all the ingredients to fire up my new 65g. I currently have a 36" Coralife Advance 2x150w HQI fixture. (CL 36 Aqualight Advanced 150W) I want to add 1 or 2 actinic T5s and lunar lighting because I like the dusk/daw effect and being able to see in my tank at night. The tank is 36x18 so I have 18" to work with. My existing fixture is 9.5" wide, so that leaves me with about 8" to fit in the T5s and lunars.

Does anyone know of a 36" two bulb fixture with built in lunars? I cant seem to find one. If not, can someone recommend a cheap 2 bulb t5 fixture...output is not a problem since they will just be supliments. Also, can someone recommend a good lunar setup for a 36" tank?

Do you think it would look better with the actinics infront or behind the HQIs?

Here is how we are looking so far...

 

well im not good with lightning but here is a bump to your question. ^^^^^^

tank is looking great though

 

I had a 65g tank. Do you have a canopy? It will give you more flexibility. You can get moonlights on ebay very reasonably. Anyway my tank had one 175W MH in the middle and I added 2 35" T5 fixtures that each had 2 bulbs. I bought a 24" moonlight strip and added that on. I bought a dual timer that actually has three settings to run a dawn/dusk(T5), daylights(MH) and moonlights. It was a lot of light for that tank, I can't imagine it with 2 haliodes. I don't have a chiller so I could only run the haliodes 4 or 5 hours a day.

 

I do not have a canopy and do not really want one. I am already concerned with the heat, although the HQI fixture does have built in fans, and dont want it all closed up in there. I thought about putting a 4 bulb fixture on there with the HQIs and only running the HQIs a few hours a day. Something like this...Odyssea T5 High Output Lighting. Then I could run a 3 timer light setup. Dark to actinics to actinics+10000ks to actinics+10000ks+HQIs, then back to dark the same way.

My only concerns with this is that I would then have a 17"s of light fixtures on an 18" tank, and I do not know which fixture should be in fron and which in the back.

 

Have you actually measured the coralife HQI fixture on your tank with the legs? That's very important here so let me know.

 

My LPS has this stunner strip and it really is bright and can be used as lunars , dusk/dawn. or it adds crisp color to daylights. The owner has the stunner strips on several of his Display and frag tanks and they really do look awesome. Also you can add up to six strips on one transformer.

http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/group/8316/product.web

 

I've read good and bad about Odyssea. My experience was a 4x39w lasted less than 3 months before a ballast caught fire even though when the short occurred the gfi tripped. I bought 2 IceCap 660's but couldn't use them without replacing all of the 12 prong plugs and end caps. So I just put the ballasts away for later and bought a Nova EP.

 

I am still looking around but right now think I am just going to go with this guy for the actinic dusk/dawn effect... Aquarium Lighting for Planted & Reef Aquariums: Hagen GLO T5 HO Linear Fluorescent Fixtures

I will probably pick up a R2 extreme Lunar setup for moon lights.

 

That sounds good.

I don't hear that great of things about the hagen glo bulbs, so when you switch to new bulbs for the t5s, if you go with say an ATI blue + you will notice a nice increase in color.


What kelvin Mh are you running? If you are using 10000k halides, the actinic or blue bulbs (not aquablues or 10-12000k bulbs) will work great.

I am running 10,000k MH on my 200g, and 2 ATI blue+ and even though the ballasts i have run my halides a little more yellowy than crisp white, the 2 ATI b+ really make it look nice.

 

P/M me I may have a solution so not to hem you in with the lighting and having only what is available from a light manufacture , Then you can just get a T 5 retro and add the moon light anywhere you want . sometimes we just need custom set up I always do I have never found any lighting off the shelf that suited my needs