[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Pegasus

It appears only the MH fans have answered this post.

I run VHO's over mine and replace them about as often as these guys repalce thier MH's. If you do a search of the Internet you can find articles on the differences between MH and VHO's. These articles will tell you how much each costs to setup and run. Then decide what kind of corals you want to keep and buy for them. Typically however, you are looking at a minimun of 4 watts of power per gallon just to keep most corals.

Larry

a lot of the replies have been from the people how have had a bunch of different lighting. I have spent over 5000.00 on just lighting my self, starting out with NO then overdriven NO , then VHO and PCs, then small MH and finally 250 watt MH HQI's

would have saved 4400.00 if I just went to MH in the first place.

here is a thought, why don't people stop looking for the minimum lighting they can get away with and instead look for the maximum after they decide what they are going to keep. sure you can keep softies and some LPS successfully under NO's but they do better with VHO or PC's. and they even do fine with MH. look at the ocean, do we only see soft corals in 50 feet of water or more? nope we see them in the reef flats along with the SPS and others and the sun is actually more intense than our best lighting. like anything any coral can be adjusted to brighter lighting with good success but a coral that needs bright lighting won't survive with little lighting, so it all comes down to where did they collect that sps, lps, or softies as they can be found in any area in any lighting conditions.

my recommendation is to decide what you want in the tank, if it is a mix, then set your lighting for the most light demanding species you want to keep.

but a lot of the recommendations posted here are from people like your self who didn't know what you get as lighting info is still relatively new and there wasn't much info a few years back. so we started with the cheapest and ended up getting more and more until it was "why didn't I do this in the first place" type of thoughts. I have zoo's and mushrooms in my tank that are more stunning under my MH than they were under any other lighting I have had, and like other corals they are capable of getting there nutrients from their algae also. so even mushrooms that are dull or brown under NO lights will expel algae and expose there colors under intense lighting.

also lets try not to use "watts per gallon as a measurment of lighting as it means absolutly nothing unless we are talking about the exact same type of lights on the exact same diemntion tank. to show my point if you have a tank that is 4" deep but huge in the other dimentions and it is 40 gal or you have a tank that is 30" deep and smaller in the other dimentions but still 40 gal a 40 watt light will produce 1 watt per gal on each tank but you can see the quality of light on the bottom is going to be a totaly different thing and while you might keep corals deicent in the 4" deep tank the ones in the 30" deep tank will probably die.

ok done ranting for today

Steve