[Myka]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

anyways I do understand what you are trying to do but let me ask you this.. what are you calling a "low light" coral. I had mushrooms, colt, leather, zoos, open brain, GSP, Montipora digitata, caps, milli's, acros, birdnest, and a few others in a 24" deep tank.

What I call "low light" corals are the ones I don't want to grow like mad!!! LOL! Like GSP, my Bubble, and all the Euphyllia's. I do have really nice coloration on my Monti caps which are about 8" from my two 39W T5s. I figured if I added more T5s that I might be able to get the same coloring with the Monti's 12-14" away from the bulbs...?

what was I getting at here, Oh ya.. anyways under the MH set up the zoos, mushrooms, ect (all the so called low light corals) also exploded in growth and colors were intensified a little. so I am personally on the side of the "No such thing as to much light" side of the argument as I have never seen a coral suffer from increased lighting when it is increased properly.

I agree...never too much light (provided you can control the heat!!). I really like my GSP (it's an odd variety), but it already spreads like a mofo, I can just imagine what it would do under MH... EEK!

I am not a big fan of sandbeds in the tank anymore, I started off with a 6" deep one myself, and while I loved the look after about 3 years it caused problems. I took 1/2 of it out and still had problems, took the rest out and problems went away. I think I would be tempted if I had to put something in there it would be a very thin layer of coarser sand siliconed to the bottom of the tank so it looks like there is a sand bed, but you could still have crazy water movement in the tank with out moving the sand around. If I decided I needed a DSB it would be split between 3 containers remotly and I would change one of the containers every 6 months, but having said that after I got rid of the sand I still always had zero nitrates so there was no need for a remote sand bed.

I have critters that need the sandbed. I won't be going BB in the foreseeable future. I strongly dislike the look of it. I run three MJ1200s on a
Red Sea "Wavemaker" in my 33 which makes for 27x turnover, and although it took me quite some time to cipher out how to position the PHs without blowing my oolite sugar sized sand around...it IS possible!!! LOL!!!! It would have been much easier with Koralia's or Tunze's.

try the T5's if you are having problems then you can always change them to both actinic and add a MH pendant to it like you originaly stated.. this way you are not waisting any lights like I did.

Steve

I have a dual strip of 36" T5s that I plan on putting onto my 65. If I go MH I will use them for actinics, if I stick with T5s, then I'll use them as additional T5s.

You still haven't said exactly what you would suggest I light my tank with...? I understand you're all for the MH, but considering I refuse to put more than one MH over my tank, what type of ballast/wattage setup do you suggest? Personally, I'd like to use the PFO mini pendant. I'm thinkin a 250w HQI would likely be enough light, especially considering there is dyck all for bulb choice if I go for 400w HQI. My understanding is you get the highest PAR if you use an HQI bulb with an HQI ballast in comparison to HQI w/ electronic ballast or a mogul bulb w/HQI overdriving the bulb...?

Thanks for all your input Steve.