considering a lighting upgrade...what should i do?

Main source of light in my tank right now is 4x54 W t5's on two Hagan (Glo Brand) ballasts. I also have a few 28W bulbs but they are junk.

The 4 54W's are on icecap t5's

So i want to upgrade my lighting to feed my growing obsession with SPS.

I am considering two options:

1) Buy an Icecap ballast. Hook that up to my 4 Giessman bulbs. Instant increase in everything and resonably cheap at $149 bucks. Then in a month or two i can add two more icecap SLRs and hook up one of my ballasts to two more lamps bringing my total wattage to about 438 and the par on my lamps is really high. Then in a few more months, if i felt that the tank could use it based on growth, i could hook up my other ballast and add two more bulbs (would be a tight fit) bringing my total watts to like 536. Total cost of this would be a little under $300 with lamps and reflectors but the inital start up is only 149 creating an instant improvement.

2) The second option i am considering is diving into the MH world and adding like a 250W to my current retrofit so that i would have around 450 W. Cost of this would be about $250, but all up front before i see any improvements. I would place it in the middle and position accordingly. Now i would also be adding some new issues like head to the equation. My canopy only allows meto go up about 8 inches from the water and I would def need to install fans so the total cost is probably about the same.

So the question is really have 6 with a possibility of 8 t5's, or add 1 250W MH

Keep in mind i dont care about the shimmer effect. I just want my corals to grow and to be able to keep most things.

I am leaning towards the T5 upgrade and installing the icecap...

What do you think?

 

In your particular situation, i would suggest just sticking with the T5s.

 

In a 75g I don't know if you would need to even overdrive your bulbs as long as you have good reflectors and bulbs, 6 T5's with good reflectors put out a lot of light. Unless you're going with an SPS only tank where you want to grow acros on the sandbed I think overdriving may be too much light.