HELP, What lights have I got????????????

T5's

with that tank if you only use metal halides you are going to need two metal halides to get even coverage you will have to decide what would be the best wattage for your tank either 150 or 250 anything higher would be to much light. I do believe that if you have T5 lights runnung the same watts as a metal halide system the mh's are going to use a lot more energy. Plus with metal halides you are going to significantly heat your house and run the air conditioner more thus you will use a lot more electricity to run metal halides. Metal halides are for deep light coverage and I wouldn't consider your tank very deep. My tank is 48" x 18" x 33" (deep) which is deep for a coral tank and I use 6 T5's and 2 250 watt metal halides. If my tank wasn't so deep I would not be using the metal halides. even though you have a bow front tank with the types of reflectors out on the market the light will spread out and cover the bow front part.Besides it only sticks out an extra 3 inches. I would just leave that area as open water space for the fish to swim.Watts aren't everything you need to look at how many watts and how many amps a light runs to see what kind of power you will be using. T5's are designed to put out more light with less power I don't understand why everybody suggest metal halides over T5 so fast. Everybody on this site wants to just see how much light they can get into their tanks. I believe that at somepoint someone is going to fry all their fish and corals trying to go big.

 

Quality lights don't just mean expensive.

I have a coralife compact light setup, a current usa T5 light setup and then i got a cheaper odyssea compact flourescent light setup and it was just as bright and now three years later it is still working with the expensive lights but for half the price. Since I got the odyssea I got a 2 250 watt metal halide with 12 moonlights from odyssea for only $240 shipped and three 4 x 39 watt T5 light setups but I use those T5's with all 65k bulbs on them to light my poison dart frog breeding facility. I own my own fish tank setup and maintanence/ exotic frog breeding company. If you go to catalinaaquarium.com or buildyouraquarium.com you will find some very inexpensive metal halide and T5 light setups that are made in the USA with a 5 year warranty. I don't think that tek will help you out with a broken light after 3 or 4 years. These sites don't sell the odyssea light they manufacture their own lights just in case you are cautious about odyssea from the bad rep they got a few years back. In fact the Catalina and buildyouraquarium lights are made in northern California.