Standard 29gal Lighting questions...

[helitaiwan963]

Hey guys,

So i've been looking at different lights for quite some time now for my 29gal. being a college student, i don't have the budget to be looking into MH or LED lights... Power compacts are even out of the question really...

Anyway I started a thread in the lighting section but got one post and that was it... so that didn't really help me much at all so I decided to try in the new to hobby section. here's the original thread for background info:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2034181

Anyway, my coral goals are really just to be able to support xenia. I did just purchase 3 stalks of pink red sea pom pom's so i'm gonna see how they fair in my tank with the 36watt T5 lighting. They are placed about 4.5" from the surface of the water right now, but it was a rough and long trip back for them so i'm hoping they make it through.

So I've narrowed my options to 2 choices.

1) I can go get another one of these 2x18watt T5 lights from my lfs and just place 2 of them on top of my tank giving me 72 watts (2x 10k bulbs and 2x actinic bulbs, or should i do 3x 10k and 1 actinic) of T5 power for my tank. Currently the one T5 i have now has supported my kenya trees and mushroom and green star polyps fine. Like i said before, xenia are the only coral i'll be getting that is more light intensive from what i've read.

2) I've been looking at this powercompact light setup from ebay. It has 1x 36watt 50/50 power compact bulb for 39 dollars shipped... This would also give me a total of 72 watts of lighting power but 36 of that would be T5 lighting.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...#ht_1728wt_905

From some reading/research i've done, T5's have better PAR readings than Power compacts so right now i'm leaning towards that, but i would like more opinions from more experienced reefers. Oh, i'm open to options with some lesser expesnive lighting but i'm hoping to stay within this kind of budget.


What would you guys go with if you were on a TIGHT budget and was going to do all low light coral with a colony of xenia? Advice would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks
Eric

[BurntOutReefer]

for xenia, you are ok with just NO lights....maybe even T5 if you have the extra $$$...so you 36watts should be ok....make sure you have good waterflow as xenia like that

[BurntOutReefer]

make sure you keep iodine levels up

[helitaiwan963]

Originally Posted by BurntOutReefer

for xenia, you are ok with just NO lights....maybe even T5 if you have the extra $$$...so you 36watts should be ok....make sure you have good waterflow as xenia like that

Originally Posted by BurntOutReefer

make sure you keep iodine levels up

Really? I've always thought xenia required pretty good lighting. I do have the one 36watt T5 fixture already, i'm thinking about getting another so i have 72watts of power from T5's.

And yup, my waterflow is ample. Around 850gph for the 29gal.

Anyone else with input on my lighting?