Advice for lighting tank with large braces

[Stewart152]

Hello everyone I am just now looking into upgrading my lighting and starting to grow coral in this tank. I have had multiple tanks and done decent in the past. Up until this point my large tank has been fish only. I’ve done away with all my other tanks, going to put all my time money and effort into this one.

Here are a few of my concerns. Money is a concern. Tank is 36” deep. With the biggest concern being cross bracing. I will attach a picture below of the top of the tank. Side bracing is 5” wide and 2 x center braces at 10” wide. From top of tank to ceiling is also 19”.

I’m looking for Leds or a led t5 hybrid set up. I am mainly interested in softies and lps. I like the movement of softies and the vibrant colors of certain lps. Chalices being my favorite. I may do a few sps in the future but it will never be a full sps tank.

Specs on tank 525 gallon 96x36x36. 180 gallon sump. 1000# of live rock. Been running over 2 years.

 

[Doctorgori]

not helpful but braces are a pain.... following

 

[Stewart152]

not helpful but braces are a pain.... following

Yeah I’ve come to find that out. They are beneficial in my case for cleaning because I usually have to lay across the bracing to reach certain spots.

 

[Stewart152]

As you can see in the picture the light spread with my “cheap” lights are decent. You can clearly see the beams coming down over the center where there is no brace. Beside it is still lit but you can’t see the beam as well. This doesn’t bother me to much right now with these lights bu I don’t want something different that may cause it to be more noticeable. I have moved some rocks around so that there is deeper valleys in the rock work under the beam. That is intentional to give it a darker look and add more depth.

 

[tsouth]

If you want to remove shadowing most, then T5's will accomplish that. Start with a baseline and then build on top of that. You could consider a hybrid fixture like the aquatic life units that will allow you to add led's to it, possibly even being able to use the ones you already have.

I suspect that the lenses on your current units have good depth but not breadth. See if there's something along the lines of a diffuser which would help with spreading the light.

 

[Stewart152]

If you want to remove shadowing most, then T5's will accomplish that. Start with a baseline and then build on top of that. You could consider a hybrid fixture like the aquatic life units that will allow you to add led's to it, possibly even being able to use the ones you already have.

I suspect that the lenses on your current units have good depth but not breadth. See if there's something along the lines of a diffuser which would help with spreading the light.

I have been looking into the 48” aquatic life units. I more than likely will take that route. As for the Leds to put in them I’m not sure yet. As for the ones I have I don’t believe there is anything I can add or do to get better spread. I did a par test once and the results were horrible so I will have to change them out when I start adding coral.

 

[Stewart152]

An update, I decided to go with orpheks and I couldn’t be more pleased! Just got them mounted and playing with the channels a little bit. But the color is absolutely amazing.

 

[TLO45]

Although I had coverage i as lacking par so I added some T5 down center and made a light rack to use my existing LEDs as supplement. Could do something similar I would think.

 

[ethridge78]

An update, I decided to go with orpheks and I couldn’t be more pleased! Just got them mounted and playing with the channels a little bit. But the color is absolutely amazing.

any pictures