Nano lighting
 

Inspired by the contest I missed here at canreef,im building a 10gal budget reef and was curious do I need mh lights on a 10 gal to grow successfull sps? or will a t5 do the trick.

I'd go with the T5's to avoid the heat issues. There are lots of successful SPS tanks with only t5 lighting.

what wattage t5 would you suggest on a 10g sps tank?

As much as I could stuff over it. Current makes the Nova Extreme Pro in 20" 6 bulb 108w fixtures. Other than that finding a t5 fixture short enough for you tank is going to be a problem. I've never seen any other short fixtures in T5, maybe someone else can chime in here. Most of the T5's are 24" and up.

Holy crap I checked that light out 419$ for a 20'' t5 thats a bit much for a budget 10 gal lol not to mention 120$ to replace the bulbs on a used unit.
For that price I should hope you can keep sps with it lol I found a 175w mh for 100$ you guys think I'd need actinic suplement with a 14000k bulb?

sadly i have that light. before our dollar dropped it was $320. still i think thats a it of a hawl for 10gal lighting lol. It does the trick for keeping SPS (ones that don't require intense lighting btw) but i wish there was more bulb support for it. only bulbs that work are from current USA

But lighting isn't your biggest worry. in a 10gal your parameters spike so easily. Run a sump if you plan on keeping sps and you need to watch your parameters every odd day. i slipped up and am now dealing with a spike. my new frags had polyp extension in the bags but the second they hit my water it was bad news.

Lol thanks for the warning,I've done the whole nano thing before though, used to have a 14g biocube. Just seems crazy to sell such a small light for soooo much,I've had many different tanks and have yet to spend that much on a light,not even for my 48'' 2x250mh with 2 pc's lol
P.s it will be run through my 100gal system,since im not in the contest i dont have to play by the rules lol

If your going to run it through a 100 gal system, just hang a 70 or 150w MH over it. I've got a 150 w sunpod over my 24 gal, pretty happy with it. I couldn't decide between that and a Viper, the wife decided the sunpod looked better. The only thing I don't like is the heat it produces, it raises the tank temp about 2 C. Not bad in the winter, but a bit hot in the summer.

With the popularity of nano tanks I can't believe current is the only supplier of 18" bulbs. There has to more coming down the pipe but atm they have a bit of a monopoly.

do you suplement with actinic?

MH under 20 Gallons
 

Since you are adding this to 100 gallon system the following will not matter to you but I wanted to add some thoughts on lighting nanos.

When lighting a small volume of water with bright lights like MH you get two big issues that have to be dealt with. Firstly cooling, if your putting 70W or 150W MH onto anything smaller than 20 gallons you will have to use some cooling method either a nano chiller (nanocustoms.com) or some extra fans across the water surface.

Secondly, is evaporation. It is not uncommon for 10 gallon tanks under MH to topped off with fresh TWICE A DAY so usually an ATO is used but this has risk

MANY people put MH on their nano successfully but it is extra expense and risk. See nano-reef.com on how to do it right.

Keith