what would a good MH be for a 40 gallon breeder?

[gfk]

in 6 months im gonna upgrade my tank to a 40. right now i have 130 watts of PCs on a 20 gallon tank.

what would a good hylide setup be for a 40?

can i just have a MH bulb and thats it, or would i need to use some actinics or something? im not too familiar with MH's

i would think a 250 watt 14k light would be ok?

[clown fanatic]

i suggest checking out oceanencounter.com they have the best MH prices around IMO. if i woulda know about them before i bought PC's i would have bought from them. im not really sure what the demensions of a 40g are but i think a 400w MH would be nice. if you buy the retro that OceanEncounter makes then its really cheap, and you get a free bulb

[DesertBandits]

36" is way long for 1 MH bulb, and 400w is way overkill for that depth of water. I think 2 small bulbs are the answer, or another kind of lighting better suited to a 36" tank.

[john76]

I run a 40 breeder with a single 250 watt bulb and it's fine.

[kellymm7149]

ditto i run a 250 14k phonix on mime clams and sps are fine

[bowfront26]

i run 2 150W DE with 14k phoenix, check my gallery.

[kaserpick]

what about 2 150w de 14k phoenix...I don't think you have to supplement actinic pc's when you use the 14k, but I'm not sure. 20k has a really blue tint from what i hear. Def. check out the website above.

Thumbs up!
Kasey

[surfnvb7]

hellolights is the best place to buy lighting systems hands down.

try to beat this deal for an SE retro, included in the retro is $20 for XM bulbs http://www.hellolights.com/arocu17rekit.html

on a 40g breeder, 2x20k bulbs would be fine.

i have a 50g breeder w/ 2x15k 175w SE bulbs and 220 of VHO actinic.

i've even seen 65g tanks (same 36" footprint) with 2x175w SE 10k bulbs + VHO's and does great for SPS and clams.

people are going back to mostly SE setups, they give a better light spread, have a much larger/better selection of bulbs and reflector choices, and of course cheaper.

almost all people with LARGE tanks do SE bulbs with lumenarc reflectors, this is the way of the future.

[grim]

While I'm not a big T5 fan, a 36" long tank is just asking for 6 T5 bulbs over it. Now, I don't mean go and buy one of those ultra expensive setups, but maybe the current and finnex. Do it on the real cheap and go with a 4 bulb and 2 bulb setup and sit them back to back..

jb

[gfk]

ya im still learning past PCs

i might go with a 29 gallon as well to keep my cost of new liverock and everything else, lower. for that i think id do 1x175 MH but if i wanted 15k (im not a huge fan of super blue tanks, unless i saw a 20k in person).

so with 1 175 in 15k would i need any other lights?

[gfk]

http://order.store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/wg-order?unique=2d312&catalog=lamps-now&et=43d2da1a&basket=b%3D5C1d8088d8001d8943d2d312ded65bea9a342051e75435019ce94672a248fac04%26l%3D%26s%3D.Ow6rYrmNH aghfB9ZPpAwS7uRu4-

does that work for you guys?

its a 4 bulb VHO setup 2 10,000k and 2 actinic, would i need 6 bulbs, or would 4 be enough?

[gfk]

im basically just tired of the dull colors i get from my PCs would vho's be almost as good if not the same as MH lighting as far as color from corals?