Yet another lighting question
 

First some background. I have a 45 gallon tank (36Dx12Wx24H), that initially will house some fish, liverock, snails, etc. In the future I would like to add some soft corals and maybe some lower light hard corals. I will likely upgrade to a different tank before getting into more light demanding corals.

So now the question. I have been trying to decide on lighting, and have been going back and forth many times. I have come down to choosing between a single Coralvue 175W MH retrofit, or a single Coralvue 250W MH retrofit, or a Coralife Aqualight 2-96W PC. If I go with the MH I plan to use a single 10K bulb with no actinic suplement.

Is the 250W MH going to be too much light for this tank based on what I plan to keep? Should I go with MH or PC in this case?

One positive about the aqualight is that it is self contained and I wouldn't necessarily need to build a hood.

A 175w 10k setup will look nice and be fine for softies as well as some of the low light sps.

Take some consideration in upgrading or improving filtration and circulation before new lighting too. Too much light with the poor above mentioned can lead to algae blooms and other problems down the road.

Just stuff to consider.

I have a Aqua C Remora Skimmer with MJ1200 as well as two more MJ1200 for additional circulation.

If I decided to go with the 250W, would it be too much light for soft corals, zoanthids and other lower light corals?

no it won't and this is what I was going to recomend. a lot of soft corals like a lot more light than we give them, people have misslinked the word "soft" with low light where some of them actual love high light. Also if you progress to more high light SPS in your tank from personal experiance I found that a 175 watt was garbage on a 24" tank. (anything over 16" tall I would recomend just going with 250 watts.

Steve

I'd also reccomend 250w on a 24" deep tank, even for softies.

Thanks, guys. The 250W is what I was starting to lean toward as well because of the depth of the tank and the longer term versatility. My only concern was for overpowering lower light corals since that is what I will be starting out with.

I have mushrooms growing in the top 10" of the tank and they don't mind. I used to have several LPS and a devils hand also and they all loved the light.

Steve