T5 lights in canopy flooding room with light

[Vuuduu]

Hey guys, so I made my own canopy to house my lights, and I painted it white both inside and out. Its roughly 60"x 24" and I have it "floating" where the bottom of the canopy is about 7" over the tank. I have 4 x 48" t5 bulbs that are tucked 4" in for a height of 12" over the water line. I thought tucking the bulbs up a bit would reduce the light spillage into my room, but i was wrong, its sooo bright in the room around the tank with these lights.

Is there anything I can do short of dropping the canopy right on the tank (which i don't really want to do). I was thinking of painting the inside black? Has anyone done this? will it help or just waste my time and paint?

I see so many pics and videos or tanks with t5 in canopy off the tank, but none of them look so bright as mine is flooding my room.....

Its in a room we gather in and watch tv as well....the light makes it somewhat uncomfortable.

 

[P-Dub]

This is the drawback of having light fixtures in a floating canopy or no canopy at all. Personally, I find that light spillage is unavoidable in these designs and is terribly distracting to me. Photos never give the true picture of what is happening in real life. Take a picture, post and let's see.

 

[Vuuduu]

Here’s a few shots, but you can’t really see the spill out that I do in person..... the pics came out really blue too for some reason.... it’s pretty white to the naked eye

 

[don_chuwish]

Yeah that's better than mine! It really is unavoidable with any type of light unless the canopy sits on the tank edge. LEDs are more focused down into the tank but you still get blinded by them if you're sitting near the tank.

 

[P-Dub]

Yup, that is about right for light spillage and better than a lot that I have seen as well. Again, I go with a resting canopy on my tank for that reason alone.

 

[McPikie]

Are you running reflectors inside that? Might be worth trying to play with the angles of them

 

[mrpizzaface]

light spill is the curse of the rimless tank. it looks like you did a nice job with your canopy build.

 

[Kyuss414]

I had the same issue. TV is a few feet over from the tank on the same wall, and once you sit in a chair to watch TV you'd get blasted by the lights themselves due to the angle and get that hazy vision from the bluish lighting. I didn't want a canopy either, but after about 4 years I had enough. Now, the canopy is easily one of my favorite upgrades I made. Made the tank 100 times more enjoyable, and even looks nicer since you don't get blasted with the light when looking at it.

I still think no canopy looks much cleaner, but I'll enjoy them in pics that I don't have to live with.

 

[Vuuduu]

Shoot, double posted, sorry

 

[Vuuduu]

Thanks!! I was pretty happy with it till the lights came on lol.
I played around with it though, and found that putting some wood boards between my t5 and radions really helped with light spillage from the t5’s. I did lose some par (Around 20-30 lost on various points in upper half of the tank), as the boards came down about 2 inches past the top of the bulbs. It really helped stop the glare while sitting down because you could no longer see the bulbs directly, but there is still a lot of indirect light all over the room. The wood boards also seems to shield the heat of the t5’s from radiating to the radions, which I think is a good thing. So I’m going to keep it there, but will trim it to just even with the height of the t5 bulbs. I figure the lights will be on during the day when we’re not even home, and if we want to watch a movie or have company over, I can just turn off the t5 and run the leds solo, which I can adjust to how bright and which color I want.
Here’s a visual of what I was talking about on the underside of the canopy, and a new pic of the tank, which is better. And I threw a pic of how I mounted it with a tv mount. It’s nice cause I can push it back 20” for easy access to clean or move rocks, whatever.

 

[Vuuduu]

Oh, I was testing the radions with the diffuser. That’s why one had and the other doesn’t. Wanted to see if it was a noticeable difference between the 2 sides while being supplemented with t5’s. And imo you still can tell a difference, but it is very minimal, I think the t5’s help diffuse the led on their own.