Hey Chin,
On a 3' wide tank, you can't get really good coverage via MH ime. You'd have to put up two mh's back to back or use a light mover (light movers rule, btw). So in the first tank you listed out up there, to get adequate mh coverage without a light mover you'd need 6 mh lamps.. 6 x 400w = 2400w + actinics. Or you could probably get away with a couple of actinics and 2? mh's on a light mover, which imo would be pretty cool, although it would make the display look kinda funky (and would be tough for taking pics) but would probably be awesome for all around coral growth due to light coverage? Would be a fun experiment, too bad the wife won't let me have more then one tank.
In any event, I think the original post was to validate the use of T5 lighting to grow SPS coral. I think T5's have been proven worthy of SPS so many times over it's a not a question of if you can run a successful SPS tank with them, but it's now become a just a matter of preference.
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