Lighting issue

[Mrtraylor87]

Hi I'm Nate, I've had my 25 gallon tank for a little over 2 years now,I have 2 clowns, a star, a few snails, crabs, coral bandid shrimp, and a couple hitch hiker stars.. my original intention was to start a reef tank once i got mine established, so i bought a couple clumps of pumping zenia and some star pollips, they did ok for a while but wouldn't grow..i recently found out that the 50/50 bulb that i have isn't enough for growing coral. Should I swap my ballast all together or is there a florescent bulb that will suffice?,...OR should i just get a clip on halide and leave my 50/50 in?

[seapug]

If "bulb" means this fixture contains a single tube, then the best advice would be to upgrade to the largest fixture you can afford that will fit the tank properly. Depending on the dimensions of the tank, you could go LED, Metal Halide, or T5 HO.

[Mrtraylor87]

thanks for the info.

[Ron Reefman]

On a 25g tank, a good 4 bulb t5 flourescent will be enough to grow anything. Even a 2 bulb will be good enough for most corals. IMHO, a MH is way over kill unless you really want to do sps corals. Good luck.