New black box thoughts on coverage?
- Thread starter Benga
- Start date
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Yeah, those almost looks identical with some modifications.
Sarah24!
2500 Club Member
Umm please don’t hate me for this I swear I’m a nice person. But these boxes are not expensive, just buy two of them and don’t wreck it. I’m sure design engineers had a reason why they made it this way. Your risking harming your little critters because you can’t buy a second light. This hobby isn’t cheap we all know this. If you love your tank just buy another light. Yes we are all kinda poor well me because I’m still in my last year of medical school and I have to work for free, but I still manage to set my tank up correctly and I didn’t use hydro or Radions either. I used lights I could afford and they work amazing. How much are these things anyway? (For all those thinking that I would make a ton of money after I graduate ukmmmm no, I wish though)
Changing lenses won’t wreck these. They are designed to have the lenses on or off depending on the tank and layout. Many black boxes come without lenses on the reds and greens for better blending.
Reefbreeders sells a variety of configurations with lenses and changing the optics doesn’t impact their warranty. (At least they did a couple years ago, been a while since I had a black box)
I would personally remove the 90 lenses in the middle area and keep them on the edges to minimize spillover.
Sarah24!
2500 Club Member
You possibly could be correct a few years ago, in fact I don’t doubt you. However, I guess it depends on the company. But quite a few have tried and it decreases the power of the light since there is no magnification. Most people don’t use green and reds a lot anyway. But we have to consider what we are doing to the live critters in our tanks.
One should of course try and measure overall intensity when using any light. I would argue for coral health it would be better to have no lenses and provide lower par and better spread than over illuminating, however when I was using black boxes I used 3 units over a 120 for total coverage, however my main point was with these style lights the lenses are generally removable without reliability issues and you are correct that increased spread does come as the cost of lower intensity which is an issue if you are running the lights at max power.
FWIW when I won the acro grow out context here a couple years back I was using black boxes (that came without lenses however I put on 90 optics on the outside edges). I swapped to hydras part way through the contest but much of the growth here was from black box without center optics.
FWIW when I won the acro grow out context here a couple years back I was using black boxes (that came without lenses however I put on 90 optics on the outside edges). I swapped to hydras part way through the contest but much of the growth here was from black box without center optics.
