Quote:
Originally posted by seahawkjohnny
...I was planning on mostly reef, maybe a clown, and or Blenny, a typical clean up crew, and a mixture of soft and SPS, Tridacna Clams especially Derasa.....I am more concerned about having enough intensity for the SPS and Clam with a 10k bulb...
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If your intention is to keep primarily "SPS" Acroporiids and clams, then you will prolly be best off with 250 watt bulbs every 2 feet with rock taking you within 10 inches of the surface and utilizing a surge device for reef top current. This will emulate the reef top environment, both in terms of water flow conditions for the corals and clams as well as the lighting requirements they need. Keeping octocorals in the same tank may be a bit of a stretch. Although there
are spp. of octocorals that will be able to use this intensity of light, the current gets to be a bit too much for most of them. You will prolly do best to concentrate on the reef top specimen choices and shy away from the octocorals and corallimorphs. Zooanthids will do OK, but for the most part will be problematic with the level of current as well. In addition, many spp. of corallimorphs and octocorals produce allopathic toxins that help them to gain a space advantage on the fore-reef areas. Sarcophyton spp. of octocorals are about the worst, followed closely by Nepthea and related branching arborescent octocoral spp. These substances stunt and kill many
stony corals through a variety of mechanisms. Heavy current and close proximity to stony corals seems to stimulate this terpene production, and although they may not be in direct contact, you will have a closed system in which many of these substances will be able to accumulate over time. Heavy skimming will be an absolute in such a system.
If you are going to do reef top, go all out and get the best you can afford now: this will save you money in the long run. In your tank, 250 watts over each 2-foot part of the tank will allow for just about any of the reef top creatures to thrive in your tank at 10 inches to 15 inches of depth, below which you'll have rock anyway, giving shelter to the fishes that you choose to go in such a system (and the cleanup crew, benthic critters, sea stars, cukes, snails, etc.). If you really want to go all out, you can go with the 400 watt bulbs, but this is a bit of overkill for most aquarium spp. at the depth you will have in your tank, and coral fading, even possible phototoxicity and oxygen toxicity may occur. Unless you want to go to the substrate and have a coral- only tank, I would leave the 400 watt bulbs to systems that have deeper water to punch through and keep the spp. that you want under 250 watts/2 feet of tank length. Although you could prolly keep some of the octocorals (in particular, yellow Fiji leathers do well under hot MH illumination), I would suggest staying with reef-top species of stony corals, with possibly some corallimorphs and zooanthids at the ends of your tank where the lighting is less intense and the current is not so bold.
Just my $0.02 US... Most of these corals that require intense lighting will also require speciation that avoids the octocorals. The areas where octocorals and Hexacorals cohabitate is usually fore-reef conditions, where the lighting is not so intense, and much bluer than the surface water at reeftop. This would be an area best duplicated with VHO or less intense, bluer MH (175 to 250 watts in the 10K to 12K temp range) with supplementation by
VHO bulbs. You might even consider putting all VHO over the length of the tank and all the way across (with icecaps). Everything will come back to which biotope you wish to emulate, and how serious you are about emulating that biotope for your specimens to thrive.
