OPINIONS ON PC ~VS~ VHO!

[qwiksilver]

OK... Aquaholic, you said your store has MH on your display tanks? If you think that your friends tank is better than your stores.... hmmmm. What store do you work at? Have they changed the bulbs lately? Do they sell corals from that tank? Cause if they sell corals from that tank (and I don't know many stores that won't) then chances are in reality your friends tank is more mature from coral point of view.

If you take 3 tanks, any size, set one up with VHO, another with PC's, and the third with MH's, give them all the same WPG (watts per gallon), the same TLC, etc. the tank with the MH's will come out way ahead. Bottom line is that it doesn't matter what you want to grow... MH's make everything grow faster (okay, maybe not everything). Anything from buttons to xenia to colt to frogspawn to montipora to acro to clams to coraline to mushrooms..... It's all due to a better intensity which is as close to sunlight as we can get right now in our tanks. MH's are like a sunny day whereas PC's and VHO's are like overcast days. Sure, some overcast days are ok, but not all the time. :wink: A 96W PC or similar VHO will put out around 4,000 lumens, whereas a 250W MH will put out around 19,000 lumens 8O . Quite different. If I were you, regardless of which corals I chose I would choose MH's. You'll get better COLOR and GROWTH out of all your corals (except the nonphotosynthetic ones and the light hating ones).

 

[bc-matty]

light hating corals.. I wonder what they look like. I haven't paid too much attention to them... I assume they would do well in a tank with regular lighting that all tanks come with. Also I have been fighting a burst of hair growth.. kinda brown and hairy looking. I likes to grow on my live rock in mats.. kinda makes it look like I need to give it a "bikini wax" if you can visualize that. It also likes to grow on my heater as well as my back tank wall. I have since taken my rocks out... placed them in salt water in a bucket and scrubbed them. The hair growth was removed. I them rearranged my live rock so that they reach higher to the top. So far I have only had a small amount come back which I remove in the tank.. though I wonder if I can spread like lawn clippings by cleaning my rocks directly in the tank.

Anyhow I wonder a little about it.. would higher lighting kill it off, and prevent it from growing.. or give it a burst of life. I have also read that the brown hair alage blooms can be battled by adding more water current with pumps in my tank. Lastly shouldn't my hermits want to eat the alage or my snail. I had more snails but oddly my hermits attacked them for their shells I assume as they all have new shells. If the hermits eat it, then I can add more.. or add more snails... Any thoughts.

 

[boomer 453]

A newbie question. How bad does evaporation get with the higher temp lighting set ups? particularly the open top MH ?

 

[liquid]

I've never seen it to be a problem given that I had an open backed hood. If it did get warm in there, I just opened my hood lid a bit more and that resolved it.

Shane

 

[wilson the volleyball]

i know how everyone feels in here. i am contemplating the same thing pc or mh. i think i am going more towards mh because i dont know what i want to keep in the future. im just cofnused. i was thinking of getting a retrofit kit but do u need to put those together or do they come together and then u just put them in a hood. i was going to use a 12" retro as a pendant over my 15 gallon tank. but i dunno wat do u think.

 

[buoymarker28]

if you have a large tank, the money and the canopy for it then use MH.

on a 15 gal tank either use a pendant or PC. I say a pendant becuse 15 gal of water will heat up fast.

 

[liquid]

Heck, if you're ambitious, hang the canopy from the ceiling from a pulley system like I did. If it gets too hot, just raise the canopy a bit and you're all set.

Shane

 

[wilson the volleyball]

I was thinking of using this light:
http://www.jlaquatics.com/cgi-bin/shopp ... o=pfo-hpen

but i am still kind of undecided.