What lighting works?

[jeffberg]

I am thinking about setting up a zoo and ricordea only 55 to 75 gallon setup. I have old regular flourescent hoods with internal ballast and was wondering if they would provide enough lights for the zoo's? Thanks Jeff

[BradL.]

Without question get yourself some halides.

[Runner]

Sounds like the setup I just replaced (2x30W and 2x40W flourescents) over my 75G tank. I figured for the cost of the bulbs (~$80 for all four) I might as well get a 2x175W MH setup (~$120 for both) and reduce my cost per watt. The four flourscent bulbs could work, but you would need to replace them every 6 months to keep up lighting levels and still couldn't keep many of the higher-light zoanthids. Any zoanthid I tried that had short stalks melted away in less than a month under my old lighting.

I've only had my new lighting for 1 week. I was growing palythoas and even a trumpet coral quite well under the old setup -- but they palythoas have all been closed the last two months. Low lighting (due to degradation of the flourescent tubes) is the chief suspect.

[tekknoschtev]

Being all that I have experience in is MH and PC - for main lighting, we've done VHO supplimental actinic - I can reccomend both of them if done correctly. We've got 192W PC 50/50 over our 40gal aquarium. We also have 800W of MH 10K over our 150, and though we just put our first frags in there a week or two ago, I can already see them spreading.

If you have the money, I'd go with maybe a 175 or 250W MH setup for your tank. If not PCs would work as well.