New Lighting for my tank... whatcha think?

This is my salt tank before:

with regular florescent bulbs

My salt tank now:

with Coral Sun Actnic 420 and Reef Sun 50/50 bulbs

*** Fixed pics... I think!***... I did, yay!

Pics are so big can you re size them?

Looks better I think

There, I fixed the picture size and learned how to do it for future posts! Alright!

tank is looking good, what type of lights are you running( PC VHO and whats the wattage? I see you want a mandarin, they really are not as hard to keep as people say, you just need a good deal of pods and watch your condi with it, mandarins are slow swimmers and can easily be caught by anemone's I have a bubble tip and my mandarin has almost become a mean a few times..id recommend a spotted or psychedelic mandarin over a green, they are more prone to/ and easier to train to eat frozen foods along with the pods. you are going to need more rock for a mandarin also, id say got small pieces that you can make caves and things with so he can scoot all around your tank, keep it up! looking good

You should get some of those things that look like shiny green/purple marbles. I think there a coral of some kind....idk but they look really cool.

im not familiar with those...

I'm clueless what they are but I've seen them in the salt tanks at my LFS.
Can you tell I'm not a salt person

lol its ok we all have to start at the same place, take a pic of the light ballast and the bulbs, cant tell the wats but it should be good enough to tell wither they are t5's or PC's, t5's are basically like regular florescent bulbs just thinner, PC(power compacts) are usually a "u" or two bulbs going together into one port

Are these T5's or PC's ?

TangTango wrote:

KMX wrote:

Pics are so big can you re size them?

Yeppers, 1600 x 1200 is too big for this post.
Resize them to 800 x 600.
Still a big size, but fits the page without any prob.

My pics are really big also.
How do I resize them?

Nitty: I resized the pics by uploading them at http://tinypic.com and selecting Message Board size from the drop down menu then copy pasted the code for forums and put it in my post. Let me know if that makes sense or not...

The bulbs are a strip light, the kind with the two pegs at either end that turn half way to screw in to place... they took the place of my florescent bulbs. They aren't powerful enough but will have to do until I can locate some better lighting. They're 15 watts each (I think, it was 15 something at any rate...) and they're on a 29 gallon tank. If anyone knows of a 24" long T5 fixture that is for sale used, let me know!

I use T5's and PC's, but only because both my tanks had lights with the purchase.
My nano came with PC lights built in. The 55 I purchase, the guy included some T5's
in with the sell.

GOOD LIGHTING, YOU SHOULD BE PRETTY GOOD TO KEEP JUST ABOUT ANYTHING, i HAVE A BUBBLE TIP ANEMONE UNDER pc'S AND ITS DOING GREAT! THE ONLY THING i CANT REALLY KEEP IS CLAMS AND THATIS BECAUSE MY TANK IS SOOOO DEEP(THATS Y IM UPGRADING TO THE 90 LONG!)

you could go to photobucket.com (its free) and just link the picture to the post that way it wont be too big thats what I do

i use only T5 HO, i have a 4 bulb fixture that has 2 10,000k bulbs and 2 420NM actinic bulbs. i am currently getting ready to replace my bulbs because i have no idea how old they REALLY are as they were in the fixture when i got it used and all i know is what i was told but they seem to have lost some of their brightness

for corals, and anem's you want bright light so you might want to replace the bulbs

then there are T-12's that are available in NO (normal output) and VHO very high output or variable high output. they do have 10k and actinic bulbs in normal output ( i know because i hade some once and come to think of it my actinic bulb was a coral sun brand)