Lighting Minimum

[IceTurf]

What are the minimum lighting requirments for SPS, high light requiring corals, in your opinion? *to keep these corals alive and within reasonable health*

Lower, soft corals?

[Aquattro]

SPS, to live and be in reasonable health, IMO, need at least 175w MH. I have seen acros live and even grow under much less, but the light was 6 inches away. I'm not familiar with the T5 technology, so no idea what they would offer. To get nice color and growth, I'd go up to 250w minimum. A lot of this depends on the depth of the tank though

[Der_Iron_Chef]

I kept Montipora Capricornis alive with PC lighting, but its colours faded. HO T5 or Metal Halide would be the minimum for SPS to thrive.

[andresont]

i have tried 96x2 PC for SPS.
Was enough to survive but no color show. HO T5 with Tek reflectors is minimum. .
MH is proven to be excellent for SPS.
If MH is you choice I’d go with 250HQI DE. With good ballast like M80, also good reflector is a KEY.

I think if you go with 175W MH, you’d still have almost same heat issues as with 250W’s and you WILL want to upgrade !.
So 250w and good cooling fans and/or chiller should be in the budget.

[IceTurf]

300$ later, but if i found some on ebay.. anyone tried the ebay MH's before? For 10 gallons, or less *yea I like pushing the limits*, I think that would be a bit much, but the bigger the better, lol

[Aquattro]

well, you forgot to mention the 10g part. Probably look through the nano threads to what people use.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

If I had a 10G, I would definitely look into something like this (the 150w version).

[IceTurf]

tks for the info&links

[kwirky]

Back when I had T5 HO teklights they bleached my first SPS I ever got

I'm going to be seeing if 150W 14k aquatinic lighting with PC actinics will be enough for SPS on my little 24g tank. It's only 16" deep and running zeovit too *crosses fingers*. I think water clarity has a part in it too. With my softies and LPS (again in my previous tank) I started running active carbon and the water all of a sudden cleared. I had a few colonies bleach on me.

I've been reading all of advanced aquarist's articles on coral colouration too and I think from looking at the articles as a whole it's the symbiotic algae that needs the light. If you can supply sustenence to your coral through other means then the coral can thrive in a lower light environment. For instance if you have mature rock providing lots of microfauna or even the bio supplementation products that could be magic or could be snake oil

I think the actual studies on lighting and colouration in corals being done by advanced aquarist are quite exciting but I'm a geek that way :X

[IceTurf]

Hmm, keep it coming, this forum is giving me a good idea of what I need if I wish to keep acropora

So carbon is bad for the corals? Did your corals get their color back? I'm planning on running my filter with carbon *and some LR rubble, maybe some algea stuff*, which now I'm wondering if it could cause the corals problems.

So a live rock which has colonies of microfauna*looks up quickly lol*, oh well that told me allot, so if i have a live rock with colonies of small/microscopic animals, the acropora color will be aided?