Lighting for fish and soft corals

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105man

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Aug 27, 2003
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I have a 54 gallon corner (fairly deep) tank. It's been going for about a year, and generally successful with mushrooms, polyps and leathers. It has two regular 20w 50/50 flourescents. The fixture sits directly atop the glass tank cover.

Is there a simple upgrade in lighting that I could make, without getting into fans, chillers, elevating the light fixture, etc.?

I gather that the best possibility might be VHO, but I don't know how many bulbs, wattage, etc. From what I understand, VHO runs cooler than PCs and T-5. Also, I had read somewhere that there is something call HO, though maybe that's been obsoleted.

I would appreciate your thoughts. As I said, the corals have done OK, not great, with what I have. But I don't want to get into multiple levels of complexity or cost. I would be happy if there's something simple that would be a moderate upgrade.

Thanks.
 

cybball

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Dec 23, 2003
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I've got a 55 gallon that has fish and some mushrooms, polyps, and now some xenia. I upgraded from 3 40 florescent tubes to a Coralife 4x65 PC's. The tank is much brighter and the polyps have now started to multiply. I had good luck at Hellolights.com. Great service and shipping was right on time. They will even match lower prices found on the internet. I paid $199 for mine without the shipping cost, which was around $17. The fans and the ballast are built right in. I just set the lights right on top of the tank glass light my old lights. I'm very happy with the new set up.
 
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