please help me out with lighting dilemma!

I have a 75 gallon and plan to add some corals soon.

I have a coralife aqualight 2x65 watt 10,000k and 2x65 watt actinic and moons.
I thought the colors in tank looked good till I tried a 2x56 watt t5 with separate reflectors ( one 10,000k and one actinic) wow! the colors in tank look much nicer,more blue and nicer colors overall.
problem is I had to use glass tops on tank and lay light fixture on top. I much prefer an open tank. now the cheap t5 quit working after 2 months!
would an aqualight pro with 150 watt bulbs give the nice colors like a t5?
or is the current outer orbit better? I also looked into the new coralife hqi aqualight advanced but bulbs are 20,000k,is this ok also?or would i need actinics also?
I probably won`t get too much into hard to keep corals but am sick of buying expensive stuff and then upgrading!

 

Hi,
If I were you I would step up to Coralife Aqualite Pro which uses hqi double ended metal halides, actinic power compacts and moon lights. I, like yourself, have spend money on equipment only to ditch it because it wasn't good enough or strong enough for what I planned on doing. I'm in the process of switching over from pc's to mh's. If you use 20,000k bulbs, they will be very blue. So, unless you want to have your tank depict a deep water reef, I would go for either 10,000k to 12,000k mh bulbs with the actinics to supplement the whiter/yellower light bulbs.
Hope this helps!
Check around to find some color pictures of what a tank will look like under different color bulbs.

 

yes that does help,thanks.

so would the tank look much nicer with the aqualight pro opposed to the lunar aqualight pc that I have now?
the brightness of the pc is pretty good but too white even with the actinics.

 

In my eyes, their isn't much of a comparison between the two. You get a much crisper light with the metal halides. You get the shimmer of the light(glitter lines), which they say, is very very beneficial, and to most very eye appealing. Supposedly the shimmering effect by the water movement on the top of the water, causes a sharp, more intense light to reach down deep into the coral, benefitting the zoanthellae in the coral(magnifying the light up to 15x, 1-4 times per second ).
The brightness may be somewhat similar to the eye, however to the corals, the strength of the bulb is more intense which most corals need. Remember that a mh bulb is a "point source" light meaning that all the light is coming from a filament in the small bulb, as oppossed to a fluorescent/pc/t5 etc, where the light is coming from the full length of the bulb.

 

thanks for ideas but what about breakers?

my 260 watt aqualight is ok but worried that the aqualight pro halide may trip my breakers?
Is this a common problem?
I live in an apartment

 

I wish I could answer that question. I don't know. You could check with the landlord. Let me know if you find anything out!