well my tank is 24x24x16. I currently have a 250w hamilton reefstar pendant about 12" above the tank. Running a 14k pheonix bulb. Im digging the light but it gets super hot and spreads the light everywhere in the room. I have sps, lps, and zoanthids in this tank. I was thinking of switching lights to a 150w sundial fixture with a pheonix bulb and acitnics. I Guess what im saying is, will I be able to grow sps with this light also. I can also lower the 150w to prevent alot of extra light all over the room. I already own the sundial.
lighting ?
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kfennell
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Why can't you lower the 250 so that it's sitting closer mine is over a 24x12x16 tank and is only 3" up. Not even running a chiller.
However I think 150 will run fine in there if you use a 10k bulb, youll lose some color through of course
Sorry, this is bad advice. It may have worked for you, however there are plenty of reasons TO acclimate to a new light source slowly.
I personally have bleached SPS corals, like stylophora when I switched from halides to T5.
Also, i would not ever run a 250W bulb only 3" off the water. At that height, you increase the risk of the bulb breaking from water splash exponentially. The minimum height I would consider, would be around 8". Another reason to not run the bulb so close to water would be the light spread. Halides have hot spots by there very nature, the size of this hot spot is directly related to the height of the bulb.
Personally I would just extend your reflector a bit, this would reduce the light spill into the room, and allow you to keep your existing lighting. Or you could use some black acrylic to come up from the tank to close the distance.
Oh, nice tank!
If you have the pendant 12" above the tank, you can add another 1 1/2 inches for the depth of the bulb in the pendant and then if you measured to the top of the tank then your looking at another 1 or 2" so your bulb is essentially 14" from the water surface. I have my bulb about 8 or 9" like Poseidon said. You could try to move it down at least another 6 inches which might help a great deal with the light spillage. You might be able to live with that. Lower it slowly though, maybe an inch every couple days.
Thank you poseidon, when you say extend my reflector do you mean lower it a bit? An acrylic three sided canopy sounds nice. Im gonna get a quote. I didnt want a wood canopy over the tank. I think I will lower it to 8 inches and see how it does with the light spill.
To extend the reflector I meant to make the reflector deeper or larger... Maybe a couple sheets of Aluminum, painted black on the outside, polished on the inside, then you can pop rivet it to the existing pendant. This would also reduce light spill, and allow you to keep the open top on the tank.
Ok this is what was done today. I lowered the light to be 8 inches from the tank and I added 2 sheets of screen on top of the tank. I originaly had 4 sheets but the tank looked to dark. Should I have 4 sheets anyways?
Well I ended up changing the light to 150 with acitnics. I think It will be fine I can just place low light corals up front. Wife is happy and I think it looks better this way. thank you all for your input.
