Taking the metal halide plunge?

[molybdenumman]

I have a 90 gallon reef tank with mostly soft corals and mushrooms. I am using the 4X65W coralife PC lights (260W) with and an extra ballast at 2X55W. I am considering moving into the metal halide lighting, but I don't know a lot about it. I have been looking at the comparable coralife light with metal halides (2X150W + 2X96W actinic PC). (No reason, just been happy with the coralife in the past.) Is the 300W of MH lighting going to be enough or should I consider going to higher wattage? There was also a question as to whether to use a 10000K MH bulb or a 20000K bulb. What are the advantages of each?

As I said, I pretty well have only soft corals in my tank. If I upgrade my lighting, I may consider clams. It would be nice to actually see my corals grow.

Any input you could throw my way would be appreciated.

DanTheMan

[Invigor]

if coralife has a 250x2 setup I would go for it. with 2x150 there's always room for upgrading..and considering how deep your 90 is (assuming 24") the 250 would punch right to the sand for your clams and stuff. and in a 90g with 2x250w your limit of corals you can keep would be close to infinite.

between the 10000k and the 20000k, I found the 20000k was extremely blue and much too dark. if you like the blue look, 14000k bulbs are nice and blue. 10000k and actinics is just right for my taste. I'm a T5 actinic fan

[BCOrchidGuy]

I had a 90 Standard 48Lx24H and the coralife 2x175 with the two NO actinics did an excellent job of lighting the tank. If the 2x150s are DE HQI units? Then that's a nice set up. You can keep some really nice clams but crocea and maxima may like the 250 better than the 150. I had a derasa in the sand under the 175s and it grew nicely, my maxima was up half way on the rock and it did pretty well but kept letting go, I moved it to 1/4 the height off the bottom and it attatched and stayed there and grew nicely.
The 250s would let you grow alot more stuff, the 150s would do your softies really nice. All depends on what you want to do in the future. As for colour I have a 14000k 250w HQI DE and it's plenty blue, I had 10,000ks on the 90 and with the actinic I had what I thought was a nice white light.

Doug