30Gallon Tall Tank, need lighting help

[enomadra]

I am getting ready to setup a 30 Gallon tall tank. It is 24"long by 13"wide by 24"high and I am wondering if it would be ok to use a 70watt MH with 2 T5's for Actinic 03. I am planing on keeping:

frogspawn, goniporia, starpolyps, mushrooms, zoo's, hammer, LT-Plate, bubble, open brain, and mabey an Sebae Anemone. I am guessing that the MH light would be about 4 to 6" off the water. That would give me a total distance of 26" to 28" from the light to the bottom of my tank if I run around a 2" sand bed. would this be ok? I am trying to get away with the 70MH because I have a very limited power bill budget monthly.

Thanks :)

[enomadra]

[Kool-cat]

You could put the corals which need a lot of light on top. If you cant keep your tank cool in the summer i dont recommend that you get metal halide. 24 inch deep is a deep tank. My tank is only 12 inches deep, after 12 inches the light intensity reduces a lot, i think by half.

[enomadra]

Thanks for the advice. I keep my house at 78 to 79 deg. with central AC so heat would not be a problem. But if the light really falls off after 12" then that is prob not going to work. Maybe I should use some 96 watt PC bulbs instead? with parabolic reflectors too.

[enomadra]

So does that mean that if I used a 150 Watt MH bulb it would cut through the water deeper??