Lighting question

I have a 48" nova extreme 4 bulb fixture. I currently have soft corals. I want to be able to put in some SPS. I also have a separate single helios 54W blue bulb.

Can I get away by replace the bulbs with ATI? Or I would need 6 bulb system like TEK 6 bulb?

ATI fixture are out of reach for me. I am still trying to sell my nova extreme to get some money for my other fixture.

Any advice?

 

Good question. Im sure someone will be answering you shortly. I know im alot of help.

 

You should be able to keep SPS under that fixture with good bulbs like ATI/UVL/Giesemann. You may need to keep them in the upper half of the tank and under the bulbs though since I don't think the reflectors used in the nova extremes are as good as higher end fixtures so you don't get quite the penetration or output.

I'm currently using a 2 bulb Nova Extreme with ATI bulbs and keeping SPS high in the tank directly under the bulbs.

 

What size tank do you have?

 

I have a 80G bowfront.
I want to know how much i will be sacrificing by not going to TEK. Like would it throw 20% more light or what is it?

 

With an 80 gal. tank, I would def. go with at least a 6 bulb fixture and use good bulbs. I say this to everybody who asks for lighting advice, you get what you pay for. A cheaper 4 bulb fixture just won't cut it, you may be able to keep the sps alive if they are higher up, but you won't have good color or growth so what's the point. Depending on the depth, you may even want to look into a MH setup. Tek fixtures are a nice middle of the road fixture that performs relatively well, although they are only cooled by conduction, they don't have fans, but people who have them have not really complained about that.

 

Most of my corals are loosing color. But my green acro is growing like crazy. I bought a small 2 inch frag and now its very very big, but like you mentioned the growth rate has slowed down now. So I thought I have to replace the bulbs but thought replace the fixture as well.

 

Screwtape, what size tank do you have? My corals are slowly becoming brown, is it because of bad lights or not getting enough light?

 

Let me clarify, the tank I'm using is a 30 gallon frag tank basically with the 2 bulb fixture over it. It's not ideal but the coral under the bulbs are doing fine but my bulbs are also maybe 5 months old only.
If your corals are browning out that's usually a sign of too little light, yes. Either they are not high enough under the actual bulbs or the bulbs are getting too old and should be replaced. Just be careful if you get all new bulbs or a new fixture with a lot higher output, you need to acclimate the coral to the new higher light, you don't want to bleach them by blasting them with a ton more light.

I think the number of bulbs you use really depends where your rockwork is and where you want to place these corals and where you want them to be able to grow. For example if you have 4 bulbs over the back half of your tank and you have an acro at the very back of the tank and you don't want to grow any corals on the sand at the front of the tank, adding 2 more bulbs to the front of the tank isn't going to do a whole lot for the coral at the back of the tank.

That said, covering the entire tank with bulbs gives you the most flexibility and you don't have to worry about it as much. On my 75 I'm setting up I'll be using 6 T5's to cover the full 18" width.

My 2c anyways.

EDIT: One more quick point, my SPS are about 10" under the actual bulbs which are ATI blue plus.

 

Does any of you have experience with Fiji sun brand? Is that any good?