Lighting a frag tank with power compact lighting

[vanzea]

Hi everyone,

I have a question for lighting specialists on here. I will be tying a frag tank to my main 150 gallon system. The frag tank is 20" by 16" by 10" deep. I have an older coralife 130 watt power compact fixture from several years ago when I first got in the hobby. Can I use this light for the frag tank if it's about 6 in from the water? The color spectrum emitted looks simular to my main display t5 setup that is sps dominant. I am looking to house mainly sps and lps frags.

Not sure if anyone has done this and I don't know if I will or if I will go the t5 or led route.

Thanks

Adam

[grigsy]

For that small of a frag tank, start with your Coralife 2 x 65 Watt compact fluorescent light first and see how it goes.

Compact fluorescents are not nearly as bad as what some make them out to be.

For years, I ran a 4 x 96 Watt Custom Sealife fixture on one of my tanks. It worked great! It was fine with LPS - my frogspawn and torch corals loved it - even clams. No problem.

For SPS, I prefer metal halides to anything else. No better coral growth than under metal halides especially for SPS IMO.

But, since you have your Coralife 2 x 65 watt unit now, try it. I assure you, it will be fine for LPS. If you want to keep a lot of SPS, you may want to upgrade from it.

[vanzea]

Thanks for the reply, like many in this hobby I need to stay within a tight budget in order to keep my wife happy, I am setting up the frag system to house corals prior to placing in my display I may try a frag of an existing sps to see how it goes... If anyone is interested ill post updates