270 gallon lighting question
 

I have a 270 gallon saltwater reef tank. The dimensions are 72" wide x 36" deep x 24" tall. It has a canopy on it and right now I am running three 175 watt 14000k metal halide lights and two 6' vho blue fluorescent lights. I have hammer coral, bubble coral, frogspawn, toadstools and various other corals as well as fish. I am wondering if this lighting is sufficient, not enough or too much? Everything seems to be doing great but I am wondering if this is the best economical lighting for this setup. Can I go with some different lighting to save a little money on the power bill? I am new to all of this and just would like a little feedback from some of you that have been in this longer than I have. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated. I am also running a chiller on this tank to keep the water cooler than the lights heat it up to. I am just trying to make my tank economical but at the same time take great care in keeping the stock I have in there happy. Thanks again for your feedback. Patrick

I don't know about lighting. I"d probably go to 250w radiums if you're staying with halides. I love that tank size though. Did you get it custom made or is it a standard tank mass produced by a manufacturer? Can you post pics?

If you want to save money on electrical cost and not having to run a chiller, then go with T5's.

I have a 210rr and use 250w and 400w MH, supplemented by 2 110W VHO with a remote basement sump. I do not need a chiller nad my temp has never gone above 80F. I chose the 250w and 400w mh because I have sps and did not want to spend the money up front for LED's.

-Steve

That is a good setup for softies and LPS, you may be able to keep SPS if you keep them close to directly under the halides. I would not go with any less light. If you do plan on jumping to SPS's I would go with atleast 250w on that size tank if you stick with halides. Or you could go with T5's, if you wen tthat way you could replace your VHO's with a 4x80w T5' and then 4 more later and completely remove the halides. This would help break up the cost instead of doing it all at once.

You have plenty of light for what you have. If you decide SPS you could simply go all 250w MH's or just switch out the center one say to 250w and then keep the SPS near that center bulb.

FWIW....

I am currently lighting a 66 x 36 x 24 tank with only 2 250w MH's Phoenix 14k's and hamilton cayman sun reflectors. The tank is an SPS dominate tank too. HAs done great for the last yr like this. Now I do need to add a little more light, and will be adding 2 60" rows of 16 Royal Blue LED's for acctinic supplementation and also I will add 15 CW LED's for a high noon pop to add some extra light for my SPS for a few hrs each day.

But in short you have plenty of light for your setup.

You may consider going LED's for acctinic supp over the VHO's at some point. save energy and bulb replacement costs.
Maybe consider LED's that will cut out your chiller cost and light cost significantly.

Your lighting is ok, perhaps a higher PAR bulb but if you want to save money the easiest way is eliminate the chiller and the VHO's as already suggested. Are you keeping species that require a cold temperature?