Advice on lighting for 210G

[kelloggreef]

We currently have the Coralife 72 Inch Aqualight Pro, 3x150W HQI MH Lamp + 4x96W PC + 4x1W Lunar LED retrofit kit. But I dont think the par is strong enough at the sand bed on our 210. The light is screwed to the top of the canopy and is exactly 38" above the sand bed and 12" above the water. Can we add T-5s or do we need 250w HQI or stronger? I love these lights but everything has to be at the top of the tank to look its best, such as clams, acans and sps. Any advice or reccomendations would be greatly appreciated. The store we got them from said we could have anything in our tank we wanted but its been an expensive mistake after loosing tons of clams, sps, and not to mention the price of the fixture.

 

[blind1993]

get a couple of icecap 660s and fit as many t5s over it as you can with indiviual reflectors and you can also keep t5s really close to the water without adding heat. but to make t5s run at max efficency you will need to keep them cool with fans.

 

[drnecropolis]

If I was replacing halides and they were 38" off the bottom I would ramp it up to 400's instead of 250's

 

[bobz]

DrNecropolis;238590 wrote: If I was replacing halides and they were 38" off the bottom I would ramp it up to 400's instead of 250's

Have to agree. I have three 250's on my 210 and they still do not do well reaching the bottom of my 210 either. I dont keep SPS so I'm not too concerned but if I wanted to do SPS I'd go to 400MH with a good reflector.

 

[kelloggreef]

I'm not too worried about sps, I am pretty much burnt out on losing them. I am more interested in what will enable me to keep acans, brains, clams etc... on my sandbed without them dying from not enough light. Do you have any problems with that using the 250's, or would you still reccomend 400's since I am doing the upgarde?

 

[drnecropolis]

If it was me I probally would go ahead with the 400's just incase you wanted to move back to sps and because 38" is kinda deep as far as what the light will penetrate down to

 

[bobz]

If I were doing it again I would use 400W. My clam is towards the top of the tank so it's not a problem but when I had it on the bottom seemed to be not doing well. I keep zoas and acans on the bottom with no problem.

 

[kelloggreef]

K, thanks for the help, we will definately keep your advice in mind when we figure out what we are going to do.

 

[drnecropolis]

Either way I think you will be fine and a lot better off than you are now