Are Power Pompact Lighting Fixtures good enough to have some basic corals

[Ace25]

Grins summed it up nicely. One small thing to add, she stated for a Reef it is 25x turn over, which is true, but that doesn't all have to come from the return pump. Most people suppliment the return pump by adding powerheads in the tank.

If you just did 25x with the return pump, your looking at a 2500+ GPH pump which is huge, more than likely loud, and heat generating if it is in the sump (most pumps that big are external and go into a pre-drilled sump).

I would definately return the 700GPH pump and probably double it to around 1400-1500GPH then add another 1000 GPH in powerheads, like 2 or 3 Koralias spread out in your tank. Of course, you have to find out the rating of your overflow though. You definately do not want to get a much larger pump than your overflow can handle because you will have to restrict the flow causing more harm on the pump doing so.

 

[Jenn Cos]

Thanks for the feed back

Sorry about the Caps:lipssealedsmilie: I didn;t mean to shout , I guess just being lazy.. Doing all my research late at night

Grins you got lots of answers for me , thanks

Ace25 thanks for your knowledge too.

Here are some more of my thoughts to your replies so you can understand me

Metal halides kinda scare me , electricilty , hot , expensive...
The light fixture , The orbit extreme , I got should let me start with being able to keep the live rock , have that cool day to night effect and possible some low light , soft corals.
I started out thinking I wasn't even going to attemt corals to save money and do a fish only tank with a regular light , but corals are to cool to avoid.

I'm not going to rush into the corals and start with rock and fish to make sure i can handle keeping the water quality up before I atempt any corals. I would be crushed if I hurt any of them , and I think this is not going to be easy but i am on a mission to do a great job

The watts per gallon of light...I seen a chart that i went by , Hopefully the orbit chart wasn't lying and it will work for me. I know i'll be limited , but it's better than no light.
Of cource the halides would be better , but I have to start somewhere in the middle, lots of pieces and parts to get.

I'll have to do research on the fish I get so I don't have a proublem when I do put to corals in. I guess these fish would be reef ready fish.

I have no idea what kind of fish and invert collection to get that's why I was asking you guys with experiance what would be a good collection for me.

I would like to get fish that are active and swim , not hide all day.

Water circulation... wow 25 x tank size. Thats a lot.
But needs to be done right. Hum... I dont think my return can handle more than 600 gph , so store told me to oversize pump to a 700 gph.. I got a mag drive 700 gph.

I don't think that bigger pump will work , unless I put in a second return , can you do that... Two returns off one pump to handle the water.

It looks like my tank has two spots where two returns can go . I have a tank with the filter box in the corner with the holes on the bottom of the tank and it goes down into a wet dry system.

It's not put together yet , trying to figure out all the best parts before I start.

I didn't get any powerheads yet...I know I need them.
power heads just get pluged in , they dont need a pump , do they? Was t told I'll need at least 2 - 3 . I Seen Ace25 said three would do it.

Is the turn over and the circulation two different things?
Im confused too:wall:

I thought that the sump pumps the water up and then it comes back down through the filter and then back up again , thats the cycle i was talking about . the pipe/overflow wont be able to handle a bigger pump.
It would pump up to much water and not be able to drain it down fast enough and i'll have an over folowing tank... unless i can put another pipe/overflow onto the pump and have two overflows to handle the water.

So , that above pargragrah has nothing to do with the circualtion of the water ( you guys said x 25 ) ?
Is that seperate or is it apart of the gph needed.
I'll need 2500 gph... only have 700 so far
if double pump , to two overflows get 1400 ,
still need 1,100 more water flow

what kind of water flow do the power heads put out ?

How about a wave machine , do they give off alot of circualtion , more than powerheads ?

Well , I've been rambeling on and on , thanks for lisioning

Love it when i hear from you guys

Have a great day

Jenn

 

[Miss my puffer]

I wouldn't worry to much about the heat from metal halides unless you are planning to set them really close to the top of the tank. I have mine about 8 inches from the top and didn't have any problems with heat last summer (do you have ac?). The one down side to starting off with an ok set of lights is that once you get going you will want more and more things (like me, saw clams, had to have one, got lucky my ballast on pc burned up, went to mh, been happy ever since, clam looks awesome hoping to get another soon) so if there is even a little chance you may want some of the higher light corals/clams then you may want to consider going for the metal halide. I would also agree with going with two or three powerheads for water circulation. I just added another 1200 gph (now have two at 1200 gph) to my 150 and it blew up alot of stuff off of the rock and has made the tank look better (of course now the fish have to swim after their food rather than waiting for it to sink. I would turn it off but there is just something amusing watching them try and swim in place, swallowing as many pellets as they can while getting pelted by the ones they can't eat. Guess I'm just evil like that:devil.