Question About Lighting For My New Tank

JawaReef · Dec 8, 2018

Hey all,

I am setting up a new 135 gallon show tank with mixed corals and am wondering at how many lights I should get? My tanks dimensions are 72 1/2" x 18 1/2" x 25 3/8" (WxDxH). At the moment I have two Radion XR15w Pros. I'm planning on using four lights with diffusers in a row. However, watching BRS videos, they mentioned about putting five on a 6' tank. Any advise?

Flippers4pups · Dec 8, 2018

JawaReef said:
Hey all,

I am setting up a new 135 gallon show tank with mixed corals and am wondering at how many lights I should get? My tanks dimensions are 72 1/2" x 18 1/2" x 25 3/8" (WxDxH). At the moment I have two Radion XR15w Pros. I'm planning on using four lights with diffusers in a row. However, watching BRS videos, they mentioned about putting five on a 6' tank. Any advise?

I would think 4 xr15's should cover. I think the video that they showed was WWC tank and I believe that's a wider tank than yours.

JawaReef · Dec 8, 2018

Flippers4pups said:
I would think 4 xr15's should cover. I think the video that they showed was WWC tank and I believe that's a wider tank than yours.

Thanks, yeah, the WWC is the video I'm referring to. By the way, saw your tank and its awesome! Your tank I might try using your tank stand as my template for mine.

Flippers4pups · Dec 9, 2018

JawaReef said:
Thanks, yeah, the WWC is the video I'm referring to. By the way, saw your tank and its awesome! Your tank I might try using your tank stand as my template for mine.

Thank you! It's based on "rocket engineer's" design from long ago.
I have built many a stand on his design.

JawaReef · Dec 9, 2018

Flippers4pups said:
Thank you! It's based on "rocket engineer's" design from long ago.
I have built many a stand on his design.

Yeah, I've been looking at his design, which is why I liked yours. Question, I cant find his schematics for his stand, do you by chance have a link for them? The green, red, blue, etc, he explains.

Ron Reefman · Dec 10, 2018

Here is the color version of his design. I think it's pretty self explanatory. I've built several stands using this design. One was 10.5' x 30" x 46". It had a 6' 180g DT, a 75g hexagon tank and a 10'x2'x16" sump/refugium (see pic). BTW, the 'side panels' down around the sump ended up being covered by a flexible PVC shower pan liner to protect the stand and floor from spills and leaks.

JawaReef · Dec 10, 2018

Ron Reefman said:
Here is the color version of his design. I think it's pretty self explanatory. I've built several stands using this design. One was 10.5' x 30" x 46". It had a 6' 180g DT, a 75g hexagon tank and a 10'x2'x16" sump/refugium (see pic). BTW, the 'side panels' down around the sump ended up being covered by a flexible PVC shower pan liner to protect the stand and floor from spills and leaks.

Thanks!

So Question, I have thought about putting some sort of protection inside the cabinet and around the sump, your the first person so far that I've heard that actually put something down there. So painting the internal with an enamel paint wouldn't be enough? Or did you want to make sure that this wouldn't ever be an issue?

Ron Reefman · Dec 11, 2018

I find that spills splashed water in the sump area are almost impossible to avoid and many of them are impossible to clean up because they are behind the sump. The plywood walls and shower pan flexible pvc was my first time trying this. It worked very well. I even made a hole in the pvc, installed a bulkhead and ran a pipe from the liner out thru a hole into the backyard.

Now I'm doing smaller systems and rather than struggling with tucking and folding the flexible pvc I switched to using sheet pvc. Check out my build thread (there is a link in my signature below). I've done this on 2 more recent builds and it has saved me from several small water issues (like the ato hose slipping out of the sump and spilling on the floor. Instead, my drip tray caught it all and kept the stand and the floor 100% dry! I'd never build a sump/refugium system without some kind of water containment system. My wife even wants me to make one to put around the 20g ATO tank!

If you have any questions about how to build one, please ask, I'm always happy to try and help... especially with some of my more 'unique' ideas!