I am looking to change my lighting on my 500 gallon tank. I plan on keeping softies and LPS mostly. My tank is 96 inches long by 40 wide and 30 inches deep. Getting coverage for the 40 width is really giving me pause. I don't want to spend a fortune on radion to get the coverage I would need. I was thinking of giving the viparspectra 300 watt a look. I was thinking if I did 4 of them with the long side running front to back to help cover the 40 inches in that direction and then I would mount them every 2 feet in my canopy. One issue is that I only have about 9 or 10 inches of mounting height above the water in my cabopy. That makes me nervous about hot spots in the coverage at that height. I've been running 4x400 watt MH but wanna change over to led for the heat and electricity savings. Does anyone have any recommendations or a similar size tank that they are running led on?
Suggestions for lighting a large tank
- Thread starter Leerph
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I agree cheapest would be viparspectra I would probably do 5 though in that size tank
Keep your reflectors. It will take just as much wattage of LED to cover the same area just as effectively... plus the cost to buy them.
If you are only going to keep LPS and softies, then switch over the 250w Halides. Fixtures are the same... dunno if you have static ballasts or selectable ones.
My typical advice is to find people who light large tanks. Folks with smaller tanks mean well, but they just don't know that what they do will not scale. Larger tank folks will offer the most effective help. If I had to light that tank with LED, then two rows of the 48" Photon V2s, but I would still use the haldies since the Photons are no less wattage.
If you are only going to keep LPS and softies, then switch over the 250w Halides. Fixtures are the same... dunno if you have static ballasts or selectable ones.
My typical advice is to find people who light large tanks. Folks with smaller tanks mean well, but they just don't know that what they do will not scale. Larger tank folks will offer the most effective help. If I had to light that tank with LED, then two rows of the 48" Photon V2s, but I would still use the haldies since the Photons are no less wattage.
That's a massive tank, how about some pictures? With regards to your lighting it may help you that I have a 24"x24"x30"tall and I have one kessil 360 over it. It does give good coverage all the way to the bottom. Kessil also gives the same shimmer as you have with mh lights. But, 8x kessils you are looking at $2-3k
Or you could do both 3 300w viparspectra and 2 Orphek 150s
Ultra Aquatics
Well-Known Member
My tank is 72x36x28, I had the same exact issue. I started with 3 x 400w MH. Too much heat in the summer and the electric expense got to be too much. I gave T5 a shot but putting a 18” wide ATI fixture over a 36” tank just doesn’t look good, it’s too dim! I am now running 4 xr30 g5 radions and couldn’t be happier. I’m using less wattage and my tank doesn’t go over 79.
Leerph
New Member
The 40 inch width is what's giving me problems. I wanted to do reefbreeders but I'd need at least 4. The orphek led look promising but not sure how many of those I would need to use to get the coverage I need. I would guess at least 8 of the 4 foot ones I would think
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Ultra Aquatics
Well-Known Member
Yep I got 36” depth so I felt your pain, I don’t have any recommendations on those lights but love my radions .
A. grandis
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Keep in mind that the amount of wattage you use with halides is actually more efficient in terms of quality of light in general (including spectrum, distribution and delivery of photons), than using most LEDs. Specially for that application! You would probably need more wattage to try to cover your system with LEDs as you can do with halides, depending on the halide fixtures you have. Sanjay actually said that about his system. I'm not sure why he still have those LEDs over his tank!
I use 2 X 250W over a 75gal zoa tank and it's great! I could use 2 X 175W and leave for a bit more time too, but the punch helps the zoas on the bottom of the tank. Either way would work.. I would just need to play with photoperiod. I still run 4 X 54W T5s besides the halides for 9 hours. Perhaps you could use 250W bulbs and leave it for more hours, if you need to. Halides are halides. A big tank like yours need the punch and the spectrum from halides is just superb! You chose a big tank and that needs a bigger budget with "big lights" for the best results no matter what you choose! If you need a chiller, you will need a chiller even if no more lights, right? The ambient temperatue in Florida isn't 76°F - 78°F throughout the year, as we all know. Same in Hawaii, for example. Keep those halides. They are the best!
Tip for you... keep couple Vornado fans driving air parallel and between the halide fixtures and the water surface. That will cut heat transfer from the fixtures to the water.
Yes, I also want to see pictures of that big boy!
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Keep in mind the 300 is 210Watts in reality..and needing to replace approx 1600W.
You would need at least 6 to maintain close to your current output and you need to run both channels at full.
Normally nobody does that.
Soo now you may be up to 8..
Using the pricing here you are now looking at $1840 and electrical watt parity to the halides on full.
How many watts you lose depends on what you want the tank to look like.
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Those fans blowing over the water cool it by evaporative cooling and moving the now airborn water vapor (removing heat) away from the tank and into the room. Thanks to the large amount of IR from the halides.
most led heat is err "up and out" so to speak.
One of the arguments against led says you now need to run your heater more.. soo it basically tells you they are not overly heating the water itself. Funny huh.
Of course some of this depends on how trapping your canopy is.. i.e say vented or open top.
2.4" light thickness and you have 10" max in the canopy.. Considering you have fans on top you will need air space, say at least 1"
So now your effective height from front of light to water is about 6.6"
8" above the water line is considered "normal" though that is arguable.
At 90 degree lensing the lights will spread out w/ the most intensity about 6.6" around the diode panel..
Assuming about 1.5-ish" in on each dimension the actual light rectangle on the water surface will be about
18.7 x 41.7
That should allow most of the light to stay withing the tank and not spill out .
That's the "physics" of it generally and ballpark estimates but should be fairly reasonable.
. The rest is up to other considerations.
And yes 8 seems the sweet spot (most flexibility, wide coverage) though there are a lot of variables including and not limited to the coral species needs and what they are used to...and keep in mind you now have 8 remotes..
Not saying any more about it.
Are your MH ballasts outside of the canopy? Just making sure.
I think it's a reasonable idea to try out the 300 watt Vipars, but I do think you will want more than 4 of them. Are there braces running across the aquarium back to front?
I think it's a reasonable idea to try out the 300 watt Vipars, but I do think you will want more than 4 of them. Are there braces running across the aquarium back to front?
Leerph
New Member
Cutting down on evaporation is a main reason for changing. These large tanks evaporate alot of water and rust all the air vents and intakes. I worry about mold in Florida where humidity is so high. I think 4 would give me enough par seeing as most ppl never run these vipars even close to max levels. My main concern is hot spots. I feel like I have figured out a way to mount them in the canopy about 12 inches off the water. I've looked at ppl that have removed the lenses or used a diffuser. I'm most interested in a diffuser mod and hoping to find some more info on ppl that have done that mod.
