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chrisowu
01/30/2007, 01:49 PM
looking to keep soft corals, xenia, zoos , mushrooms and the like and wanted to see if anyone had opinions about the orbit 2X65 watt 30"light. Two of the bulbs are day bulbs and the other two are antinic. it has a switch for each set of lights. Would this be a good choice for this kind of set up?

cdangel0
01/30/2007, 01:52 PM
I think 2x65 would be sufficient for those. As long as you don't want to upgrade to harder to keep corals. I would reccomend getting the best light you can afford now instead of trying to upgrade later and feeling like you wasted money.

I should have spent the money on T5s but thought I would be OK w/ PCs...I'm now shopping for T5s 3 months later.

Tunjee
01/30/2007, 02:14 PM
I would go with a t-5 setup. More light and uses less energy than PC's. Just make sure you have a single reflector behind each t-5 bulb, not one big reflector behind them all. Go with the 24" sunlight supply 4 light. EAch bulb has a reflector.
http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=SL-960005&Category_Code=SunlightT5

Steverino
01/30/2007, 02:21 PM
or aquacave.com for a t5 retro kit.

aclos3
01/30/2007, 02:30 PM
I have a 29 and got into this hobby "innocently" at first; mostly keeping soft corals, LR and fish. Unless you are absolutely sure you want this to be a lower light tank and don't have ambitions of moving to hard corals and higher light species, you should go for a halide or T5s now.

I have a 250w SE Hamilton 14k on an EVC ballast w/spider reflector. I got it from ocean encounter for a little less than $200 shipped. I built a canopy for the tank which allows me to have the bulb about 8 inches off the glass cover.

If you are set on keeping just the softies (or this is a dedicated softy/ low light tank), that fixture should do fine. I ran a Coralife 20" quad 96w fixture on an 18" tall tank and had success with soft corals. The bulb had four tubes, alternating daylight / actinic. I was satisfied with the color (until I got the 14k Hamilton, lol) and the price.