Originally Posted by
chrissu
I initially built my own using outdoor CFL floodlights. I saw the water quality go up but my DIY design was flawed and meant I was messing around with where the water lands on the screen and stuff like that all the time. Pretty soon that got old. I later had Santa Monica build me an ATS and found that it was well worth the investment. My SM ATS has extremely strong lighting. In fact, the lighting is stronger than what you would think would even work but its is evenly spread out at the same time and works extremely well. I just leave my SM ATS alone and change one of the two screens once a week on Sundays. I'd recommend getting a complete SM with lighting or at least buy a bare bones setup from him for cheap without the lighting and you can leverage what you have lighting wise today. A warning though, once you get the base unit, you'll be down at your LFS in no time buying the off the shelf Nova 24" T5 lighting that his ATS uses. Its a cool setup!
BTW, I have a 92 gal tank with 30 gal sump and the SM 100 is just about right for that size. I wouldn't go any smaller.