Lighting advice for small frag tank

[DangerDave]

Hello all! Before my current build, I've been fish only. Lights were about looking good, things are different now (and how) with my current reef build.

I am adding a small frag tank to my system 18x18x8. It will be plumbed into my main sump, and sit next to my display tank (60x24x26, which is in wall, located in my garage). The display is 160 gallons, the sump is 45 gallons. Taking into consideration the rockwork, I am estimating about 150 gallons of water total. I am lighting my DT with 2 AP700 fixtures. I am kicking around adding the Aquatic Life hybrid fixture. It was my original plan to use the hybrid fixture, but waiting for the 60 inch unit was taking forever (in my impatient little brain anyway).

I would like to home any new corals in this tank. Let them grow, or settle a little, before I place in the DT. If I need to, I may move corals from DT to the frag tank as needed. Granted this wouldn't happen often to any one piece of coral, but I don't want my lighting to be an issue with any moves from tank to tank.

Can I mix and match light types without it being detrimental to the corals? T5 in the frag, LED in the DT? Should I have LED on both? Is there anything else I should be considering?

As always, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Dave

 

[hybridazn]

You can mix and match and make it work, lots of ppl have done it. But honestly if you have the ability to make both tanks have matching lights I would recommend that

 

[[Cameron]]

The shallowness of the frag tank makes matching the light in the display tank tricky. For this reason, I would probably look at an LED fixture for the frag tank which will allow you to dial in the fixture to more closely match the light intensity of the main display tank at whichever depth the corals will live or has lived in the display tank. You can accomplish the same "trick" with T5s by changing their mounting height as well but an LED seems simpler.