Experience With Moving Lighting System?

[TruRacr314x]

Does anyone have any experience with moving/track lighting systems? I'm considering employing this over my frag tank. Everything I've found is from like 5 years ago. I've seen them typically used in coral stores/farms where the tanks are 10' long. Would there be any advantage to having one 250w or 400w mh on a moving track above a 4' tank? I've read about it being better for the corals because of varying angles of light....but I'm also interested in energy and equipment savings.

Thanks!

 

[racin2438]

All I can say is the MH...is not going to save you money.........

 

[TruRacr314x]

All I can say is the MH...is not going to save you money.........

This isn't really meant to be a debate about type of lighting. I've done my time with LEDs and have not found them to be beneficial for me as main lighting. I know MH costs more to operate...but is one unit on a moving track beneficial over two? Not looking to save a ton of money...but on a frag tank where I'm not worried about display appearance, why have two units as opposed to one moving? Off that matter...replace my same question with LED...would one unit (Radion for example) moving on a 4' tank be beneficial?

 

[TruRacr314x]

Bump....anyone?

 

[joshbbert]

I used light movers in hydroponics to avoid hot spots and use 2 mh's instead of three. While my plants thrived like this avoiding one spot being blasted with light I have to wonder how corals would react to the unnatural movement of light. Sun moves east to west not east to west and back again but im still new to corals so just a thought

 

[joshbbert]

Also h.i.d. fixtures don't have to be expensive I always always run them after 7pm as it cuts your usage in half if you're on the right plan with the electric co, if its not a display tank and you don't care you could always reverse your light cycle helps with temp as well since youre avoiding running hid lights during the hottest parts of the day. Although I'm not familiar with marine MH's I doubt they run as hot as my 1000's do, I'm using a cheapo aquamana led, thing works great 120$

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Cool idea! Got a picture of what you might be considering?

 

[TruRacr314x]

Cool idea! Got a picture of what you might be considering?

No pictures yet...just bouncing ideas. I think the same principle works for LED or MH....taking operating costs out of the equation, would it be detrimental to have one unit over the frag tank vs. two? As joshbbert said, the systems I've found with quick google searches lead you to hydroponics. There are several inexpesive systems to move the fixture back and forth. My frag tank will be my 80g tank (48"x24"x16"). What if you, instead of buying the normal 2 fixtures for this size tank, bought one high end unit and moved it back and forth sweeping the tank continuously. Even if you had to run the unit twice as long, it would still equal out to the same energy as two units. I dunno..maybe it doesn't make sense, but that's why I'm asking!

 

[lionfish5740]

It's crossed my mind plenty of times but I've never researched it. Could you post links to these inexpensive light movers?

 

[joshbbert]

If the lights strong enough and the corals don't mind the unnatural movement I dont see why not. I've had great success using them with plants. No part of your tank would ever be blacked out so I guess it would just be like cloud cover

 

[Rob&Gab]

I was thinkig of doing the same thing but I'm not gonna go with it.


Here is a good site to look on for the tracks pretty well priced.
Light Movers - eLights

 

[joshbbert]

Anyone have any input as to how the corals react to lights on a mover?

 

[Eric B]

Yes I had one set up over a 6' frag system with 2 MH on the light mover and I never could get any good growth with the light mover as it seemed to never stay bright in one spot long enough. I ran it this way for over 6 months and I eventually unplugged the mover and moved all the frags under the MH's. Some people might have had luck with these over corals in a frag system but it never worked for me! I also tried about every type of bulb out there thinking that might be it and even slowed and increased the speed on the mover with no luck. Nothing grew and lost a few frags and I think it was mainly because they were in the dark or not in direct light most of the time. It might work better on a 4' system with 2 MH units moving but it is something you would have to play around with to see.