250 LPS light & flow advice

[xroads]

Hey all

I am setting up a 250 LPS only tank. 80*30*24.

I am used to sps so I want to make sure I am not going to over kill my LPS

Light I plan on 3 400MH with 10K bulbs & 4 36" t5's with 20K bulbs.

For flow I was going to have a hammerhead on a closed loop with an oceans motions 4 way.

Do I need to scale it back in any way or will this be good for lps.

Thx
Craig

[JenDub]

Hello,

Great idea setting up a separate tank! You will have much better result this way also you can do water changes on the lps system using the sps system's waste water =)

For lights; I would highly recommend scaling them back to 250's and definitely 20k or maybe 14K depending on your personal preference. LPS prefer lower light and bluer spectrum since they come from much deeper water than sps. Radiums run at the standard wattage & not overdriven are my personal favorite.

T5's are a great idea; if you want the light a little whiter you can use some 11k aquablues to offset the 20k mh but I wouldn't recommend more than two 11k t5's on that tank. The other fav t5 bulb is the actinic plus; great color enhancing bulb!

Will you be running the entire output of the hammerhead through the om 4 way? Be sure that the flow in that tank is not too intense of you will risk damaging the tissue; you may want to try a dart instead.

Good luck with the new build!

[kev apsley]

JenDub hit the nail right on the head, your not gonna get any better advice than that :)

[scapes]

I've got a 180g (6x2x2) w/ 3x250x 10k. I had a wellso that was almost touching the floor, moved it up mid-way, hasn't been happy since. that was a month ago. I've got numerous LPS and I have found that I have to keep them on the floor. so, IMO, 400w would be way too much for LPS!! Now, I've never tried a 20k (tried for a week w/ radiums and thought it was too blue so I swapped out) so if you're going to do that maybe it won't be as strong as my 10k so you might be able to put them higher than I can??? but 400w is too much

[xroads]

I didnt think that 5800 gallon of flow in an 80" long tank would be too much.

Can a person use a gate valve to lower the flow without burning up the pump. I would rather be able to have too much & be able to turn it down rather then not having enough.

Thanks for your input

[njdevilsfan]

you could gate the pump off running a lot of the water back to the sump that would reduce your flow back to the tank