what lighting to use

[FishieNut]

I'm setting up 100 ga reef: 48Lx24wx18h. I was looking at the AquaMedic Sexy = 2x250 HQI 10000; 1x150 HQI 20000 and either the Maristar 2x250 plus 2x92watt T5 or the AquaMedic similar fixture.

Is this enough for SPS and clams and a general reef? Which one is better? Watts/gallon are about the same.

Any ideas?? Thanks.

[charlie]

You really only need 2 MH over a 4' tank. The 250w will give you as much coverage as you will ever need.
I don't have any experience with either fixture you mentioned, but I am sure someone else around here has, maybe they can chip in some info for you.

[Ninong]

I'm setting up 100 ga reef: 48Lx24wx18h. I was looking at the AquaMedic Sexy = 2x250 HQI 10000; 1x150 HQI 20000 and either the Maristar 2x250 plus 2x92watt T5 or the AquaMedic similar fixture.

Any of those fixtures would be very nice. I believe the Aqua-Medic Sexy series has remote magnetic ballasts rather than onboard ballasts like most of their fixtures. I'm not sure they still make it but I guess there are still some around. It's no longer listed on either their German or U.S. website.

The Maristar fixtures have remote ballasts.

The remote ballasts would make the fixture lighter and make it not quite as hot. The onboard magnetic ballasts add a lot of weight and a lot of heat to the fixtures that use that configuration.

The two 250w 10,000K HQI DE lamps with the one 150w 20,000K HQI DE lamp in the middle for extra blue and for a dawn/dusk effect is a nice rig. They also offer that in the Aquaspacelight fixture. You can also get it with two 150w 10,000K HQI DE lamps and one 70w 20,000K HQI DE lamp in the middle. Because your tank is so shallow, you could go with either version. Obviously the 250w size would be better for SPS and clams but the 150w version would be adequate. It all depends on how crazy you want to get.

Aqua-Medic has all sorts of new options available now. I don't know what the availability is because their warehouse in Colorado caught fire in December 2005 and that probably messed things up. But they offer two or three HQI DE halide lamps with or without T5 supplementation on their 4-ft fixtures and they offer three, four or even five halide HQI DE lamps with or without T5's on their 6-ft fixtures now. And their German website claims that electronic ballasts for all of the halides is now an option. In the past, only the center 150w 20,000K HQI DE lamp came with an electronic ballast. That's the way they built the Aquaspacelight anyway: two 250w 10,000K HQI DE lamps with onboard magnetic ballasts with a 150w 20,000K HQI DE lamp with onboard electronic ballast in the middle. Or you could get the original version with two 24w Osram blue PCs in the middle.

The top of the line for Aqua-Medic is the new Aquasunlight NG fixture that comes in either 4-ft or 6-ft lengths. It comes with T5s for actinic supplementation plus HQI DE lamps, plus LED moonlight(s), with either magnetic or electronic ballasts. It's on backorder over here as far as I know.

Is this enough for SPS and clams and a general reef? Which one is better? Watts/gallon are about the same.

Any ideas?? Thanks.

I don't know which brand is better because I have never even seen a Maristar fixture. I have a 4-ft Aquastarlight Future fixture with two 250w 10,000K HQI DE lamps and a 25w blue incandescent moonlight in the middle. It's a nice, high quality fixture but it's heavy (about 35 lbs) and it gets very hot. Things you should be aware of in case that's important to you. Obviously if you get a fixture without onboard ballasts, it will be much lighter and won't get as hot.

[FishieNut]

Thanks for the info. I'm leaning toward the 250/150 HQI. I'm going to my first MASLAC meeting tomorow. I'll ask around, maybe have some feedback for someone else.

Thanks again.

[The Grim Reefer]

Either are good units but the Maristar fixture has Reefoptix reflectors which are one of the best you can get. If you decide to go with 150 watt lamps I'd go with the Maristar because of the better reflector. Going with 250 watt lamps gives you 2 advantages. If you wanted to run 20K lamps you will still have plenty of intensity and should you decide to upgrade to a taller tank down the line you would be able to use the fixture assuming it was still a 4 ft long tank. Disadvantage would be more power usage and heat. Of course if you used a 250 watt system with 14 or 20K lamps and used the fluorescents for dusk/dawn only the heat and power issues would be a near wash.