What's The best light for a 45 Gal

[carlosara]

I'm new to saltwater and i have a doubt about which lighting system should I put in my tank. Its a 45 gal and I'm planning to put corals and fish. don;t know what to purchase because everything has different wattages and I don;t know what would be the ideal wattage that i would need.

Thks for your help.

[Pishy-Guy98]

First of all, what is the length of your tank?

[orion251]

I would go with a 4 or 6 bulb T5 light. I think a 45g tank is 36" so each bulb would be 39 watts. A 4 bulb could keep most corals but SPS may need to be higher in the tank.

[Jai1985]

hi everyone im new to the site and saltwater..lol, would a setup with two (2) 39w t5s one 12k and one 420nm actinic be enough for softie corals? i just desperately bought a new hood offline ...ouch$$...and im hoping it will work for the two i bought...the lfs said my t8s wouldw work since i have ocen bulbs but he also seemed a little unsure so here i am... any thoughts?

p.s. my eyes are killing me! i think ive read almost the entire forum! oh yeah tank is 36" x 12" x 18" (LxWxH) 46 gal bow front

[Parrothead]

Jai1985,

Welcome to reeflands

The light you have just bought will be fine for a softie tank, however it probably wouldn't be enough to support any lps or sps corals or anem., you would need at least a 4 bulb unit for the lps, sps, and anem.

For softies you should be good to go.

Again welcome to reeflands.


Feel free to start your own thread

[Jai1985]

not really interested in the lps or sps but could adding my t8s back to the DT in addition to the new t5ho's provide enough light for an anim?...at least till i can upgrade later?...i dont have any anims right now as i like to know what im getting into first..lol biut i would love to have the pair of clowns and their host anim i say at puppies and more the other day!

[Parrothead]

The t-8's are not really gonna help you with keeping an anem, you would need a 4 or 6 bulb( the 6 might be to wide)T-5 Unit you'd have enough light to keep anems. without adding a pretty much useless T-8 bulb to the mix, stop thinking watts per gallon that is old antiquated thinking, we are more concerned with light output and par, go look at the picks in Parrotheads 180 gallon build, you'll see my 55 gallon with a 4 bulb T-5 fixture, that'll help you see what I'm getting at, look at he last few pages at the pics, actually I'll go ahead and post them here, the first pic is a power compact 196 watt light, second pic is with my new 4 Bulb T-5 unit with factory bulbs, notice the difference in the color brought out by the T-5's vs the pc's, even when I first got the pc fixture I didn't get the light quality that I get off the 4 bulb T-5's, But I ramble on here, you best bet is to save a few bucks along the way and move up to a 4 bulb T-5 fixture, you have the time because something as delicate as the anems. need the tank to be mature, at least 6 months down the road, also do some research on the type of anem. you want to keep, several out there are too big for your tank or mine