Lighting of 29 gallon tank! Eclipse 3

[heathman]

I have a tank that has been set up for three months and seems to be doing ok. Lost some fish from ich along the way but have learned a lot. I have an eclipse hood 29 gallon tank. I have modified the hood to handle a protein skimmer and installed the smartpaq pc retrofit lighting 65 watts. I also took the old lights 36 watts total and put in moisture resistant endcaps and installed them in the middle area and it seems to be working great! SO I have 101 watts of lighting. What type of corals can I put in there! I know mushrooms which I have a few put wanted to add a couple of more things. This seems to be a odd light combination so i was not sure. Will the stock lights that I put back into the tank with the retrofit help me at all. I know it equals 101 watts but im not sure the 36 watt bulbs are adding aye benefit. Thanks.

[Whopper Stopper]

I have a tank that has been set up for three months and seems to be doing ok. Lost some fish from ich along the way but have learned a lot. I have an eclipse hood 29 gallon tank. I have modified the hood to handle a protein skimmer and installed the smartpaq pc retrofit lighting 65 watts. I also took the old lights 36 watts total and put in moisture resistant endcaps and installed them in the middle area and it seems to be working great! SO I have 101 watts of lighting. What type of corals can I put in there! I know mushrooms which I have a few put wanted to add a couple of more things. This seems to be a odd light combination so i was not sure. Will the stock lights that I put back into the tank with the retrofit help me at all. I know it equals 101 watts but im not sure the 36 watt bulbs are adding aye benefit. Thanks.

Im very new at this hobby and have a 25 eclipse reef tank. I only had a ho 32w which is much less than yours but the advice I got was to go with halides. Apparently for corals and such you want around 6-7 wpg and yours is around 3.3. I scraped the whole hood and bought a refurbished sun pod for 150 bucks and it works perfect. It has a 150w halide and actinic and white moon lighting for night time which looks super good. It gives me around 7wpg. I also added a cpr bakpak protien skimmer for another 150. runs more quiet without all the bubbles from the eclipse's filter system. It also seems to run just a cool because theres no hood. From what ive read there is corals that thrive in lower light so If you dont want to change anything than you could probebly do that. hope this helps !

[Germanman]

yes would highly recommend that light or something similar.

[heathman]

Well I will definitely upgrade tank and lighting late in the year! But for now Im just trying to get by. I'm just not sure what the light configuration that I have will be of any benefit?

[Germanman]

u have just over 3wpg...so most soft corals should do ok under that even some LPS (large polyp stony corals) would do good.

[heathman]

OK, I have upgraded again! I put another sunpaq retrofit in the eclipse 3 hood. Which seems to work well. That gives me 130 watts of pc lighting. 10000K and 460NM times two. I want some hard stonies but I am afraid that is still not enough. I'm reading that I need MH lighting for these is that the case. I may have just wasted money while trying to save some. Tank is doing well though it seems. Have several mushrooms and polyps.