Are MH's really necessary?

Its really up to you. If you dont mind keeping everything at 20" and shallower, than the T5's would work. But if you want to keep anything lower than that, you'll need to keep the MH's

 

How many hours a day do you think the lights should be on?

I try and have the actinics come on 2hrs b4 the halides, and shut off 2 hrs after the halides. About how many total hrs of light do you think is required?

 

For my 55 I run my actinics for 16 hours then my halides for 8 hours. I like to give plenty of time for my corals to stretch out

 

I have a tank thats also 29" deep and I dont use my mh cause no corals yet. But I only plan on burning the center for 4-5 hrs and t5 for 8 hrs. I would keep them around at least.

 

I recently found a link to a guy' s tank who won some sort of award for it. It was phenomenal. Anyways, he only ran his MH 6 hours a day, with PCs and some T5s the rest of the time. He used 250 watt MH. He found he had much better growth, color and health with this. At that deep, I would use MH.

 

You have a 210gal tank. It's really part of the cost.. It's like driving a Lambo & putting 87 octane because of the cost.. It is what it is....

 

The thing is that you said that you wanted to have a clam. Most clams appreciate being on the sand bed. If you could live without any sand bed corals or photosynthetic creatures, you could get away with t5s. Your reef would just start about 6 or 7 inches off of the sand bed.

 

My Actinics are on for 16 hrs a day and I only burn my MH's for 7 hrs. If you are going to sell that chiller PM me and let me know what you want and what size it is.

 

Dude's got a point

 

I understand where you guys are coming from but i've got like a $400.00 electric bill each month and if i don't NEED the MH's i'd switch to T5's.
I'm going to take the advice of keeping what i've got though, so MH's it is.

Anyone know how much kidneys are going for on e-bay these days?;D