Lighting Upgrade Question

[dileggi]

I have the BioCube29. It has a 72w canopy. 1 36w 10,000K coralife daylight straight pin and 1 36w Blue Actinic03 straight pin.

I'm thinking of going with the retro kit through Nano Tuners. This kit will double the light output to 144w.

My question is this:

Is there any advantage to actually doing this? I guess basically, I want to know if I did this, would this enable me to be able to keep anything that I currently cannot keep with my stock lighting since it would still be PC lighting?

Everything that is in the tank now is doing fine and I don't mind doing the upgrade, but I'm just not sure if there's a benefit to doing it since it would still be PC lighting.

I want to keep the stock hood and this seems to be the only upgrade for lighting available that would enable to keep the hood.

All my tank info/stocking info is listed below!

Thanks in advance for your help!

[dsn112]

If its doing well dont mess with it. Unless your upgrading to MH, which will probably require a chiller also. Why don't you save the money so you can upgrade to a bigger tank?

[rustybucket145]

Have you looked at the T5's? For the size/space/cost you can't beat them. They will give you Halide results with a fraction of the cost/electricity.

[dileggi]

Originally posted by dsn112
If its doing well dont mess with it. Unless your upgrading to MH, which will probably require a chiller also. Why don't you save the money so you can upgrade to a bigger tank?

Great! Thanks for the info.

As for the bigger tank, I have a 75g also with African Cichlids in it. I've been toying with the idea of switching the tank over or possibly replacing the tank with a 265g that I really want. There are two issues:

1.) I really like the reef setup, but I also enjoy the Africans as well, so I'm not 100% if I want to give up that tank.

2.) My wife isn't that thrilled with the size of the 265g, which ineveitably would be in our dinning room.

3.) My choice was NOT to replace the 75g, but add the 265g to the "collection".

Unfortunately, option 2 & 3 are solely based on room size constraints; not a money issue.

Option 1 is just my innability to make up my mind!

[dileggi]

Originally posted by rustybucket145
Have you looked at the T5's? For the size/space/cost you can't beat them. They will give you Halide results with a fraction of the cost/electricity.

I have not looked at the T5's for two reasons. I'm not sure that there is a retro fit kit available for them for the BC29. If there is, I have not found anything other than the PC upgrade. The second reason is that I am keeping the hood and not going topless...no other hoods are available to fit that cube..again, if they are, I have not found them.