Recommended lighting for 55G reef

[insomniak79]

I've got a question for all you fellow reefers out there. I've come to the realization that the lighting in my acrylic 55G reef tank is a bit inadequate for some of the corals I'd like to get. Currently, I have 2 40 watt NO's (48" Coralife 50/50 + Acintic 03 Blue), which puts me at around 1 1/2 watts per gallon. The general consensus, from what I've heard, is that you want approximately 3-4x watts per gallon. I don't think MH's will work for me, since the top of my tank is all acrylic and it'd probably be too hot even with fans (I'm assumming???)... My NO's right now are about 2" above the top of the tank, but they run fairly cool so they don't cause any probems. This leads me to thinking that I should either get PC's or VHO's. So far I'm not sure what to get, but I'd like to have around 220-240 watts and am looking for suggestions. Anybody have any? I'd specifically like to know the type, make, & model for both the light itself & ballast. Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks
-BT

 

[ChrisRD]

There's tons of information on lighting if you do some searches here.

What are the dimensions of the tank? What species are you interesting in keeping?

BTW, watts per gallon is not a very useful rule-of-thumb IMO.

 

[beerbaron]

well if you want to do the cheap approach you could use Lights of america lights (DIY) the color isnt great but it works pretty good IMO. if you get atinic bulbs in the existing setup and combine the two, the color will balance out pretty good. do searches here for VHO - MH - LOA etc.