Enough lighting for a 37g?

[Anonymous]

My mother has gotten tired of maintaining a 37g Oceanic that I gave to her some years back, so I plan to set this tank up as a small/nano reef tank. I have had a number of reef tanks over the years, from small to large - softies to sps. Currently, my only other tank is a 330 that has mostly softies. Because this tank is in my office, my attempts to turn this into an sps tank have not met wtih much success - not enough time to keep things dialed in.

In any event, I plan to make the 37 into an "ultimate" sps tank. I do not want to cut any corners since this will probably be my last reef tank (I just don't have the room for anything larger). The tank measures 24" x 18" x 21" high. Right now, I have 4 x 65/55watt power compact fixture for this tank. I know that this is a decent amount of light, but I am tempted to switch over to metal halides. And if so, then I would rather do it now before I build the canopy.

Any thoughts? What is the most amount of light (within reason) that I might want to go with? FWIW, I don't want to add a chiller to this tank, so I limited to cooling fans and the like to keep temps in check.

Thanks.

 

[Anonymous]

anybody?

 

[cindre2000]

As long as you are willing to top off the water fairly frequently, evaporation is a very easy way to keep the temps in line. I have a 150w halide over my nano and the temperature stays at about 75 degrees F. With out the fan it easily climbs to the mid 80's. However, I loose at least 1.5q of water a day and more in the summer. If you can hook up a RO unit with a solinoid and float switch on a timer you can almost ignore the top off completely.

As for lighting, if you want SPS through out the entireness of the tank, I would go with 250w halides. If you just want sps in the upper 2/3 and maybe some monties lower down, I would go with 150 or 175w halides.

If you want to save money on electricity and you don't mind loosing the glitter line (or maybe you want a slimmer canopy), I would go with 4 overdriven T5 HO, w/ parabolic reflectors.

 

[Reef Aquatics]

I have a 30 gallon Oceanic cube with a 250 watt double
ended 15,000k metal halide and two 65 watt PC true actinics.

I have the oceanic glass top over 75% off it. I also have a 12 gallon
nano cube as my sump/refugium with a 24 watt PC that is on 24 hours
below in the stand. I have caulerpa algae that needs 24 hour lighting.

I run the Metal Halide and one PC for 10 hours a day, and both PC's
for 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours at night and I get almost 0
evaporation out of the main tank...and get a small amount out of the
Refugium. I add about 1 to 2 cups of Freshwater every 2 days to the
refugium. Also my temp is always between 80 -81...with No Chiller.

In my opinion with the depth of these of cube tanks..a 150 watt MH is
not enough. Esp with SPS..

A 250 watt MH is perfect for these.