t5s

[hopo05]

ok my tank is 2ft deep ,1ft wide and 3ft long i have only 2 clowns and 6 chromis also 4 cleaner shrimp and 2 stars a sifter and a monster bristle iam planing to put corals in when i finished my diy lid
so what size t5s how many watts and how many?

[Paul Davies]

you can probably fit 36 watt t5 compacts in there, i have a octogon and i have 2x t5 compact whites and 2x t8 blue's.

[landragon]

hi. my suggestion would be to get icecap or aqualux reflectors for a four bulb set up. get good bulbs. many threads about this recently. check out http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=679852
for starters. this covers alot of this. you should really try for the icecap ones as they would fit much better and are slightly better overall as well. not sure what corals you want in the future but depending on this decision you may or may not need the icecap ballast as well as it overdrives the bulbs and would get more penetration at the 24' depth you are dealing with.
in regards to the previous reply the t5ho 24" bulbs are 39 not 36 watts. four would give you just over 4 watt/gallon and the icecap ballast would do near 6. this is a lot of light in terms of brightness. also do get good bulbs. read through the thread i linked to for answers. good luck

[dwdenny]

with only 12" wide aqualux wont work they are like 3 1/8" wide or so. Go with the IC refelctors. Also depends on what type of corals you would be keeping. 24" T5 are 24w and the 36" are 39w to clearify the two above statements. If you run them on IC 660 ballast you can get probably about 50 or so watts out of the 39w lamp but it also depends on what you are keeping if you need to overdrive them. HTH