halide q@a

[BowieReefer84]

Just go with the halides, and a 6 hour light cycle.  I have mine come on at 4:30pm and off at 10:00pm, so I can view it when I am home.  I'm not around the house much on weekends, so I don't mind not seeing it during the day. 

[matt]

Or to add another option...a couple of VHOs and do the old school look that has pleased so many for so long

[gws3]

I run the metal halides for about 6-7 hours.  I'd run it longer but my system leans towards lower nutrients, and I believe I've even paled corals out at times due to the balance between light and nutrients being light heavy. 

 

I run reefbrite xho blues on a few of my tanks as supplementation.  I used to run VHO, but they don't have much output for the amount of energy used.  I tried running T5s for supplemental, but at that time I couldn't find a combo that looked as nice as VHO.  Reefbrites have a lot of punch.  I'm not sure they help with coral growth, and they can even burn the top side of corals a bit when i went full photoperiod too quickly.  I run the reefbrites so they come on about an hour before the halides and turn off an hour or two after the halides turn off.  It's purely for aesthetics for me.  Radiums look good enough you could run them without supplementation.

 

Oh, and on the 90 I have a 36" reefbrite xho blue right in front of the lumenmax elites... it doesn't take up much room.  One XHO is plenty, no need for two, and you don't need a 48" on a 48" tank in my opinion.  The extra 6" at either end likely just spills over. 

 

I plan to put a single 5 foot xho blue on the 300DD in the near future. 

[gws3]

Just go with the halides, and a 6 hour light cycle.  I have mine come on at 4:30pm and off at 10:00pm, so I can view it when I am home.  I'm not around the house much on weekends, so I don't mind not seeing it during the day. 

 

This is basically what I do as well.  I guess the only downside is when I work on the tanks on the weekends I have to wait until the lights are on or start the photoperiod early.

 

Honestly when it's just the blue reefbrites on I don't really enjoy looking at the tank.  It's just too blue.  If I really wanted an extended photoperiod for viewing... I think I'd just get a single t5 around 20k and let it run outside the halide photo period.  But the somewhat short photoperiod has never been a big deal to me.

[pizzaguy]

One single 36" sounds like a very reasonable option to me and yes its just for viewing pleasure. Agree 100% on the radium statement. I've seen some beautiful NATURAL looking tanks with just radiums.