[DJ88]

lets say a SPS was taken from 30 Meters

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it is put under MH lights ad a distance of 1 foot, maby it is thee for a couple days

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buy it and put it in your tank 2" below the surface

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You'll kill it. End of story. Take a look at the graphic I added in this thread.

To start tho you won't find many, if any, SPS at depths of 30m. not enough light. that is softie and LPS areas of a reef. I'll get the info from one of my books when I get home after school. I have some general numbers in a book I have at home.

Ok,
now if you were to take something that was in a tank at one to three feet in depth from a LFS and then move it to a depth of 2" you are going to increase the amount of light that is able to penetrate the water from 10% at three feet, to ~40% at one foot then to ~80% at two inches you are doing huge changes in the amount of light the coral will be hit with.

A good comparison is taking you from your house where you had regular incandescent lights and then for 6 months then threw you onto the beach in the middle of summer with just a pair of swim trunks and no sun screen. How will your skin react? Toast. You can recover from it. The coral most likely won't.

Anytime you add a new coral unless you know with 100% certainty that this specific coral came form the identical or higher lighting conditions in the previous tank you should always acclimate the coral. Start it low and then work it up.

Reverse acclimation. are you hinting that you want to keep SPS in your tank? I thought you weren't going MH? If you aren't, all I can say is Don't do it. They can survive under VHO but need to be high in the water column. Even then most won't stay colored. They will go brown. Some will likely will recede and die.

I have seen what happens to SPS under NO lighting. It doesn't work. unless you put it directly below the waters surface. NO(even overdriven) doesn't have the intensity to feed a light requiring coral. They aren't getting the light energy they require to keep up with growth needs and replacing lost zoxanthellae. If something happens(injury or attacked by another organism) they will not have the energy to combat and survive this incident. Even if you feed.

Save yourself the headache. and the coral. If you want SPS. Get MH. Go for the highest intensity you can get. ie 250W Iwasaki. They have the cheapest bulbs and are heads and tails above anything else for PAR.

Until you have the knowledge and experience under your belt start small. Go for the softies and easy LPS. As the tank matures(ie a year) and you have the care of those accomplished and you aren't having any losses due to tank conditions and learning something foreign to you, then move up to the more difficult corals. M. Digitata or something like that. If you jump right in and try keeping the more difficult corals(most SPS) all the while you are learning how your tank is going to react to different conditions you are going to do one thing. kill a lot of coral.

It is good you want to learn. But the big part of that learning is hands on not reading on the net. Because you can read from the books and online and spit out that info is not the same as actually doing it. Save yourself the headaches in the long run. start small. Start easy. Run the tank with just a fish or two for a few months after it finishes cycling, then add one very easy coral. ie GSP. If things go well with your tanks parameters then slowly add one more at a time. My sister followed this philosphy and she has what I concider a very successful, low light reef tank.

I am repeating myself, I know. but you are sending out signals that you want to try things that only the most experienced hobbyists do. Even then they only do some for it for testing purposes. Don't put the corals at risk. Either set up the tank for SPS and have the light they need or don't do it at all. Messing around with lower then required needs for light will only kill off coral that could have survived in a properly set up system. I waited over a year before I even tried easy SPS. And then I went right to what I was told will work for survival of those species. I have the impression you are trying to bite off more than you can chew. Small steps. Have a plan for the future. But don’t jump too far ahead. You’ll save yourself the headaches and save a few corals.

Book knowledge is one thing, experience is another. Getting the experience takes time. Do just that. Take your time. Make a decision regarding what you want in your tank, from that find out what you as a novice will require to give those species a chance to live and set that system up. Then stick to that decision. You are at the point right now you have to make that decision. If you want SPS, put the MH in now. If not. Don't. simple as that.

You are bouncing all around about what you want for lighting. Sh!t or get off the pot. buy the MH or don't keep SPS until you add the light they need. It is as easy as that.. Sorry to be so blunt but it needs to be said.