what is the best overall selection of lights for a 125 g.

[saltwaterrocks]

i was wondering what kind of light i could be able to grow coral and keep most everything. i was hoping for something cheap cause im just a kid and something that could keep some cool coral but doesnt have to keep all kinds.

thanks

halides!

There are a couple of ways that you can go about this now. On a previous 125 gallon reef tank I set up I used 2 x 400 watt halides and 2 actinic 160 watt VHO's. Yeah I know your supose to use one halide for every 24 inches of tank length but hey one caught on fire and I procrastinated around on replacing it and never got around to doing it. It actually worked out well though. I spread the 2 halides out evenly across the tank and this left some less in tensely light areas at the end of the tank and allowed me to keep an number of softies but left lots of areas for Croceas, Maximas and SPS corals. As such I was ablke to turn a bad thing into a good thing. This was also my forst attempt at halides as well aqnd I was still a bit of a newbie. The 400 watters looking back in retro-spect were a bit much and I think that 250's would have worked out just fine.

Optimally you would use 3 halides and your choice of actinic lighting to back them up. I have seen several Coralife set ups utilizing the 150 DE halides and this has worked pretty well. I personally feel that these tanks would be better with 250 DE's though. If I didnt use one of the new coralife or comparable brands of light fixtures I would definitely recommend 250 watt SE fixtures using 10K bulbs such as the XM's. I would also in that case use VHO as opposed to T-5's or PC's. If you choose to run 20K bulbs however, due to a drop in par, with these bulbs I would step up to 400 watt halides and gain back some of the lost intensity.

Thats just my humble opinion....

Look around here on the forum as I just posted a pretty decent lighting article in the last 48 hours that might help you narrow down your choices a bit. It was a pretty unbiased article on lighting in general that gives the Pros and the Cons of various forums of lighting as well as some observations I have made using them on various tanks I have.

[Doctor_Reef]

Ditto's with Imaexpat2!!!! Check out his articles...good stuff!!!

[Sugar Magnolia]

Here's Ray's article. http://www.coralforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=7226

[CoralAdict]

How about maybe trying Florex lighting, new technology. I got one from Ebay from http://lenslights.com/ I had to use it as a temp in the nano cube. This light worked awesome, way too much for the nano though. I haven't had any experiences with it yet , cept as a temp. Just a consideration, and please let us know any feedback on the florex technology if you try it.

[FishinInTheDark]

http://www.coralforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=6933&highlight=light

My opinion is that they are just glorified compact fluorescents. I posted an older thread on them.