Lighting help

Starting a 10gal reef with some small corals and possible anommonime ect,

Questions
1. How many wats will a 10gal need
2. What kind of lights will I need
3. If I need MH lights where do I find those?

 

Hey Sammy, a 10g is very small so depending on what you want to keep you should be able to get a 2-bulb T5 fixture and be ok. I'm thinking MH will be overkill for a tank that small, but I could be wrong, unless you are trying to keep SPS. You prob want to wait on Anemones until you're 6-8 months in with the tank. Nems like stable environments and when you just start a tank up it will need to mature to comfortably keep one happy. An unhappy nem can easily crash your tank so def I would wait on getting on.

I would look into T5 fixtures that are the width of your 10g tank, I forget how long they are. Brands like AquaticLife, Current, Coralife, are all good for that size IMO. For bulbs you should survive on stock bulbs but if you want to spend more I would go with say an ATI Blue + and an ATI AquaBlue Special to give you the daylight and actinic mix.

Stick with LPS and softies maybe. Another thing to think about is a smaller system will suffer a lot more from water param fluctuations, etc. If you can get a larger tank, you may be more successful.

 

Moved to lighting board. Please post on right boards. Thanks

 

+1 to Mojoe's post. Coralife is the only manufacturer of a fixture to fit your tank. UVL has bulbs to fit the fixture. Nanotuners.com has the bulbs for sale. I would replace the stock bulbs after 3 to 6 months. You should be able to keep any animal you want under the fixture as long as your system can support it.

 

Thanks, yeah I wasn't sure who made small enough T5 fixtures/bulbs to fit a 10g.