zoa lighting
 

formal hello: "hello, my name is eddie...and im addicted to reefing"
first question: setting up my 2nd reef tank now, 10 gal. i want to do a mainly zoa tank with the odd "something different". curious to know if i can safely upgrade my lights from 36w PC to a 150w MH w/dual t5actinics? too much light for such a little tank and zoas?

That is a very drastic change but a good one for the zoanthids as they tend to be dull and brownish under PC.

for the zoanthids, I would use a 20,000k lighting and put a lot of shading at the begining and put them at the bottom. Shading can be some screening or a few layers of egg crate. You will see if the zoanthids get very close to their base they have too much light. If they start to get long foot then they are missing a bit of light.

If you light shock them chances are they will melt.

Let me be more specific by saying the tank has been running since oct1.2010, only thing in it right now is some snails and a bunch of hermits.

Wow.... 150 W Halide on a ten gallon. You are going to have so much evaporation and heat its gonna drive you nuts. I was running a ten gallon (that I just shut down) and I only had a 96 watt PC on it and that was hard to control the heat. Let alone I was adding upwards of 2 liters of water a day. In a small tank evaporation is much more obvious and in turn your salinity will be hard to maintain.

IMO not a good idea on such a small tank. Upgrade your tank ha ha!

I think the 150 MH could work so long as it's not sitting at the surface. Give it some distance above the tank.
Did I read right and see you wanted dual T5's along with it? I'm not sure you would even be able to position that all above the tank, and you'd have a lot of light spill effectively making the T5's not very useful.

By raising that halide... you are going to get light spill either way. What height are you recommending?

i found a light on ebay for a really good price so i wanted to give it a shot, as far as upgrades i have a 65 as well, this is just a "side-project". the MH fixture is the same price as the t5 fixture, which is why i posed the question. it comes with legs to sit approx 6" above the tank. i also have a lid on the tank which is helping some of my evaporation as it covers about 80% of the surface, leaving room for my AC70 fuge.

heres a link to the ad on ebay, maybe the light itself is S#!T and that will end all disputes lol.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...=STRK:MEWAX:IT

As for a lid.... this will also increase trapped heat. If you get a good T5 fixture I am sure you can do just as well.

ok so on the topic of t5, i found one that has 4 and 6. depending on how the brackets work i'd like to get the 6 and do 60/40 actinics/daylight as thru research ive noticed more people doing it this way for zoas/shrooms.