Tank Placement, Lights too bright for room

starypotter · Jul 8, 2018

Hi everyone, sorry in advance for the novel.

So back in mid May I got my first tank, it's a 29 gallon with a 20 high sump under an open stand. I ended up putting it in the living room. On the same wall as the TV. We thought putting it out in the living space would be nice because then we can see it, not to mention it would be easier to care for. In short this is the only room in the house that it can go in.

I have some zoas in there, along with a hammer coral, and some GSP. I started the zoas at the bottom in a little rack to let them acclimate to my tank, it was on a low light (black box led) to begin with and I've been working it up since a couple of the zoas started stretching for the light. Today I bumped my blue channel up to 40%, whites are at 5% and frankly I don't know if I want them any higher since I like the glow that the blues bring out.

From what I understand many people keep their lights at higher percentages than this, the only problem is that it's starting to give me a splitting headache whenever I spend time in there and well we're TV people so it's a considerable problem.

Does anybody have their tanks in their living space like this or does everyone have their fish rooms for this? What do you do about your lighting?
I know I could always just change the times that the light is on, but we like to be able to look at the CUC and corals (fish are still in QT), so turning it off earlier would mean that some of us won't ever get to see it on due to work schedules. I'm thinking a sort of hood might help, but I must admit it already looks rather frankensteins's monster with the open sump and adding some sort of homemade shield probably won't help matters, it feels like it would just make it even harder to care for.

TLDR- LEDs are too bright for living room and are causing problems, how do you keep bright lights in your living spaces?
Setup for reference

Waters · Jul 9, 2018

Is the problem actually seeing the LEDs or the light spilling out from the tank? If you are just trying to hide the actual light you can go complex and build a canopy. Easier method would be to buy some black paper or plastic and cut strips, holding them on all four sides of the light fixture using magnets. This will block a lot of the light and direct it straight down. Can the fixture be lowered at all? I would lower it as low as you can and still stay the minimum distance away from the water that the manufacture recommends. Also build some doors to block the sump in.....hiding that light alone would help a lot.

Gareth elliott · Jul 9, 2018

An option that might suit both the tank and your eyes.

Change the lighting schedule on your coral light. Buy some cheap led low power strips that glue to the sides of the blackbox light. Put them on a separate timer say on 2 hours after main light is off. So you can still see the fish without the eye sore.

starypotter · Jul 9, 2018

Waters said:
Is the problem actually seeing the LEDs or the light spilling out from the tank? If you are just trying to hide the actual light you can go complex and build a canopy. Easier method would be to buy some black paper or plastic and cut strips, holding them on all four sides of the light fixture using magnets. This will block a lot of the light and direct it straight down. Can the fixture be lowered at all? I would lower it as low as you can and still stay the minimum distance away from the water that the manufacture recommends. Also build some doors to block the sump in.....hiding that light alone would help a lot.

I do believe that the problem is the light from the fixture itself, and not so much the brightness of the tank. More specifically I think it's the white channel. I'll try experimenting with that today with those suggestions. I agree that I probably need something across the front to block the sump light, and it has caused problems in the past but since I don't have any macro down there just some crabs in time out I don't feel so bad about turning it off when needed. I'll check the manufacturers info on how high to place the light, I think I might be able to lower it a couple inches since my water level isn't to the top but I can't lower it too much or it doesn't have the right spread unfortunately.

Gareth elliott said:
An option that might suit both the tank and your eyes.

Change the lighting schedule on your coral light. Buy some cheap led low power strips that glue to the sides of the blackbox light. Put them on a separate timer say on 2 hours after main light is off. So you can still see the fish without the eye sore.

I might look into something like that after I try some other options, I don't want my corals to close up when the reduced lights come on, especially since they're some of the only things in the tank right now.