Lighting for 300 gallon tall

[jpappy789]

Which is why I suggested a cheap alternative for now...shop lights. Even hanging, I would expect them to reach the bottom of the tank. Just a guess though. My example was extreme...just saying that even with plants there isn't a magical range of 2-2.5 wpg that absolutely needs to be met.

I dunno...just offering the alternative.

Two of these http://www.homedepot.com/Lighting-F...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053 or something similar :huh:

 

[stratusfearrr]

or you could up it to four of those home depot lights, which would be 160 watts, and cost around 80 bucks, instead of 900+

and that way, you could spend that 100 or so dollars, and if you ended up never using it for saltwater, you wouldnt have spent the extra money.

Just a thought.

 

[jpappy789]

Actually its 2 x 40 watts for each fixture. So two alone would be 160 watts.

In the grand scheme of things, the "extra" cost for now might be a nice cushion in the future.

 

[stratusfearrr]

jpappy, i think we forgot something. Gstrommen already has 2 light fixtures at 260 watts apiece. So there is already more light than those homedepot set ups.

Whoops.

So i guess its back to the upgraded original one. I don't think there is a middle ground with something around 600 watts, is there?

 

[jpappy789]

I am missing something here...

edit: I completely misread the very first post. My apologies gstrommen.

 

[gstrommen]

Thank you everyone for your help and ideas. You have definitely given me some good information to base my final decision on.

 

[coach_z]

do you have a wood hood over you tank that you can hide lots of ugly lights in? because if so you can save yourself a TON of money with ahsupply kits, or shoplights and just shove a ton of bulbs up in there.

 

[ExPeNsIvE HoBbY]

Throw the WPG rule out whether you have live plants or not being as it has no place anymore in the hobby with the advent of HO lighting etc. The WPG rule was basses off of either T12 or T8 lighting(I don't remember which) and all of the other lighting methods(T5, compact flouresant, MH, LED) all have higher PAR values and lumen output per watt...

Without plants, just worry about what looks good and not wattage. If you plan on going saltwater later, buy that fixture when the time comes, who knows, the fixture you like now, that you would spend $800-$1200, might be $200 in the future, because it is likely to be "old news".

Shop lights are ugly, but take the time and buy some wood to make a nice looking floating canopy to hide some shop lights in. They are cheap($17 after tax for fixture and daylight spectrum bulbs, around here anyways) and use as many as it takes to make it look right to you...

If not, keep using your current setup. Trust me, more light is gonna kill you in algae problems if there are no plants to use up nutrients...

Trust me again, I have bought some expensive fixture because I thought they would look better, but without plants I just got algae. Now I run quality T8 shoplights on a lot of my FW tanks that have no plants, and the fish look just as good as if they were the expensive ones...