buying new lighting

+1, I am also a budget reefer and have pretty much diy'ed my entire system. But the skimmer is defenetly one of the first things you need to buy. You can start cycleing your tank without the lights, but along with your tank, the skimmer takes a break in period and should be cycled with the tank. So the sooner you get your tank cycled and your skimmer broken in, then the sooner you can get fish. Also, do you plan on makeing this a reef tank, and if so, what kind of coral?

 

yeah gotta agree here. You are better off spending the money on a skimmer than get the lights once you plan to start keeping light dependent animals. As you figure out what animals you wish to keep than you can make a better decision on what light will work best for your needs.

Then again you also might as well just get a light that is good enough to support the most light demanding species so you wont need to worry about upgrading later. I have yet to meet a reefer that says in the begining that they only want low light corals and doesnt soon enough end up with high light corals.

 

Here is something I dont understand about lighting. Im just going to use 2 examples for comparison. Which is better... 4 x 54 watt T5 or 4 x 65 watt PCs. Im just trying to get a better understanding of lights. Im not saying that those are what im looking at buying but I always here T5 is better but also the higher the wattage the better?

 

anyone...

 

T5s are a better shaped design in order to maxmize the light reflected down into the tank by use of a reflector thus making a less powerful (wattage) T5 be able to achieve higher PAR values since a PC bulb cant mazimize the use of a reflector as well just due to the shape of the lamp. So a PC lamp may have more power but a lot of that power is wasted up and away from the tankj

 

thanks

 

Why is this so cheap?

48" T5HO T5 Aquarium Light Cichlid T-5 Reef Lighting - eBay (item 230335558747 end time Apr-15-09 14:47:53 PDT)

 

If you want to piece together a Metal Halide you might consider fish need it;lights; food;Sponge. I am putting together a fixture from them one pay check at a time