Marine reef,salt, aquarium light help me choose

Question

Ok my options are 260 watts power compacts, 216 watts t5 high output, or 500watt meta; halide. This is for a 50 gallon tank 48x13x19. I don't know which one to choose. 500 watt might be to powerfull, 216 of t5 might be to little, and 260 watts is run by powercompacts and dont think they are that good. Which is more powerfull powercompacts or t5ho. I know t5 puts out more light from each watt then powercompacts

Answer 1

What type of species of coral or inverts will you be keeping? Some corals will probably benefit more from the 500 watt output, and halides are great to use for SW. If you don't need that large of a spectrum, I would go with the T5's.

Edit: These will depend more on the depth of the tank than the amount of water it holds. In deeper tanks, light has a harder time penetrating to the bottom layers of the tank, and therefore more intense lighting is needed. This being said, I would go with the metal halides. You won't go wrong with them, and it will allow you to expand your options on corals and inverts you can keep.