Need advice on what to do about lighting!

I just received a 90G (48Lx18Wx24H roughly) tank from my parents that they are no longer using. I've progressed in my planning stage all the way up until lighting. I'm planning on having corals at a later date, but probably not for 6-12 months after I've had the system up a running with a couple fish and some LR in it.

So I'm defiantly having some trouble on decided what type of lighting to start off with.

The other thing I'm struggling with is what to do about the top of the fish tank.



It never had a hood that covered up the lighting. All it has was this plastic lighting canopy. (lol sorry for some reason ImageShack kept rotating my picture)




Now while this was adequate for their Fresh Water aquarium, I don't know if it will work for my Salt Water. My father also seems to think really hot bulbs might actually start to melt the plastic.

So my dilemma is, I'm not sure what type of lights/lighting fixtures I should start out with. I'm also not sure if 'said' lights will be able to work with the canopy thing I currently have. I have no idea where or what to start looking for if I wanted to replace the current top.:-/

Any advice is greatly appreciated

 

How much do you plan to spend on lighting? What types of corals (SPS, LPS, or softies) do you want to keep?

 

you existing top w/ light will get you started cycling and is ok for fish only with live rock. I would use it for the next 6 months while you save some cash and get either a canapy with retrofit lights built in or a fixture that will sit or hang over the open top.
I would look for something that has 2 - 250w MH lights and 2 supplemental T5 bulbs. this will let you keep just about anything you might want to add to the tank in the future.

Good luck and keep us posted

 

I agree with Telgar, an alternative lighting would be a 6X54W T5 unit from ATI or Tec Elite.

 

Before we give you advice, we need to know what your budget is and what types of corals you eventually want to keep.

 

Well I'd like to be more specific, but I'm not too sure what type of corals I'd be keeping just yet. I plan on doing just FOWLR for probably close to a year. And assuming everything goes as planed I might try adding some corals, but this being my first salt water tank I want to take it slow. So I haven't necessarily done much research on corals or what corals I would want.


As far as my budget goes, it's kinda open. I'm not looking to spend tons of cash, but I don't want to buy cheap and replace it later. If I don't have to replace the top of the fish tank then I would like to keep it under $500ish dollars if possible.

If the top needs to be replaced then I'm willing to spend more to get exactly what I need/want.

Money isn't so much of the issue as getting it right. But if I can get it right for less and get similar results as the most expensive stuff, then that would be preferred.

Telgar: You mentioned getting a "canopy with retrofit lights built in or a fixture that will sit or hang over the open top."

Do you know of anywhere to shop or purchase something like a canopy? Also, is it possible to do an open top on a saltwater tank? I have seen some freshwater set ups like that where the plants even grow above the water. However, when doing fish research it seems there are quite a number of species that like to jump out of the tank lol. I have seen some places selling things like all glass aquarium covers, but idk how good they are.


Sorry for the newbie questions, Ive only done freshwater up to this point and they are much simpler. While I've found plenty of tutorials and guides to set up sump tanks and what not, anything I've looked up about lighting just talks about the types of lights. There not much of how to set them up in a good way. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places :

Thanks for the help thus far though!

 

There are several ways to do this, if you have any ability for building stuff you can easily make your own. Go to your LFS and look at the floor models to get some ideas, there are a number of builds here on 3reef as well. Look at Jwin and Triplemoms 46G bowfront video contest winning submission.

you can also google "aquarium canopy" and the whole first page has many good options for both buying or building.

here is an awesome recent canopy build http://www.3reef.com/forums/i-made/upgrade-halide-canopy-build-85343.html