[trreherd]

no, i think you missunderstood what you read. You have about 4 different ways of getting light. flourecent,t-5,powercompact,metal halide, and moon lighting. Im guessing all these different types of lighting are getting you confused, but its simple relly t-5,powercompact and regular flourecnt are all tubes and there good for a medium lit reef tank. The other is metal halide and thats for higher light demanding coral. actanic lighting is blue light(420-460nano-meter) But most other lightinhg is measured in kalvin. lower kalvin(2,000-9,000) are more yellow, and thats good for freshwater plants. higher calvins(10,000-20,000k) are more blue/white and thats good for reef tank lighting. For reef tanks the best lighting is actanics mixed with regular lighting. So you can get the flourecent,t-5, and cp in actanic or any other color you want, but metal halide only comes in 65k-20k. Moonlighting(led) is for nightime veiwing. not neccesary.

 

[trreherd]

You can only use one, or you can used multiple. I am only using compactflourecent But i will only beable to keep low and medium level light demanding coral. You need to figure out what kinds of corals you want to keep and we can decide the best lighting for you. We also need to know what size your tank will be. Alot of people use two types of ligthing, metal halide pendent mixed with some cp or t-5 actanic.

 

[trreherd]

Musho if incandesent and vho are both worthless(from what i hear) than why bother mentioning them?
''Trreherd actinics go all the way to 470nm''
Ok im just triing to get him a basic understanding of lighting, so can we not try and confuse him(by geting all technical) and instead help with his questions?

 

[trreherd]

musho vho should not have been mentioned because its going out of style, the tubes are too expensive reletive to t-5 type lighting. You should have re-read his original question before mentioning incandesent OR this super actanic bulb usmc mentioned. Theres no need to try and confuse him.