beginner - lighting

[Carol Carnes]

I'm thinking about starting a new salt water tank in the spring. I'm going to start small, 20 gal., with only 4 to 5 fish. I want to start buying my equipment a little at a time. Right now I'd like some recomendations on lighting for a 20 gal. tank. Any good brands to look for, how much can I expect to spend? Any good recomendations you can give me will be greatly appreciated. I already know about the live rock and live sand. Just need some input on the equipment right now. Thanks Carol Carnes

[prestage3ek]

look for a light that offers the 3 most common now a day lighting features: a 10k bulb, an actinic bulb and lunar lights. Its also tough though cause you need to measure the width of your tank and find a light setup that is for that dimension. I have a 29 gallon tank and its 36" wide, so I went on the internet and found only 2 or 3 light setups that were for that tank. I ended up getting a Coralife Deluxe Aqualight from a popular internet store for $149. Good Luck

[kfowler]

I use two Coralife 24" 14 watt 10,000K T5 and 14 watt actinic. Maybe $80 total.

[sir_dudeguy]

[welcome]

I'm going to start small, 20 gal., with only 4 to 5 fish.

Sorry :) 4-5 fish will most likely NOT fit in a 20g tank. If it were freshwater, then sure they'd fit, but not saltwater.

anyways, for light...depends what you wanna grow. if you want beginner corals, i'd say just go for soft corals (xenia, green star polyps, kenya tree, all those types of things). That wouldl require the least light which is cheaper. You could grow all those very well with 2x65w pc bulbs. The coralife aqualight is a good one. It woudl be around 100-150 i'm guessing.

Just stay away from Jebo/Odyssea products.

[jdm01]

I have a coralife light on my 90g. It is very dependaple. Just a word of caution. I started with a 29g and it worked very well. I went up to the 90g because it really is tougher to maintain a smaller aquarium. You seem to have more margin for error in the larger tanks with water quality and all. The 20g will be fine, you will just have to stay on top of water quality.