upgrade lighting ????

[rkezo]

Hello all,

This is my first post here.

I have just traded a 26 Gallon bow front tank/stand/light/filter combo from my friend for a old home stereo. It has a Eheim Ecco canister fillter for it. This will be set up as a reef tank. I had a 90 gallon tank built into the wall of my last house so I know about salt water tanks but the question that I have is in the lighting area.

The tank came with a Coralife Power Compact light strip it has two 36 watt bulbs one Attinic and one 10K.

I was thinking of upgrading the light and placeing a Coralife dual PC 65 watt on top or a Coralife dual 65 watt and 150 watt MH. I really like Coralife but the dealler says the PC/MH combo is way to much. Is he right???

Am I dumb to want ot upgrade from the Dual 36 watt PC's??

I tend to over due everything and like to through alot of money at stuff to make it really nice. I went way over board on my 90 gal that was built in the wall (as far as Filtration and Lighting)

[IslandCrow]

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be much help other than regurgitating what I've heard from other people. I'm still trying to figure out the whole lighting thing myself. I do know that it's really going to depend on what types of corals you're thinking about, though. I'm pretty sure that lighting is going to be fine for soft corals, but probably not quite enough for LPS or SPS corals. I've heard some say you can never have too much light, but my mushrooms have been withering with my new 4 bulb T-5 lighting. Of course, part of that may just be them adjusting to some significantly brighter light.

Anyway, there actually is a lighting forum, so you may want to try repeating your post there if you don't get good answers here. I was able to get some pretty good answers to my many questions there.