Glass brace on a 150g question

[chk4tix]

I have recently purchased a used 150g tank (footprint is 72"X19"). It has on the top in the center a 13" piece of glass and on each side a 2" strip as well. I assume these are for bracing, however, does anyone know how much these will affect my lighting? I plan on using t5's.

 

[Harry_Y]

The will affect is a little but I would not remove them

My 180 has them as well

 

[kiraburk]

We had a 215 with a brace - it didn't make too big of an impact on the lighting. I would definitely leave it in though - we bought ours with it punched out and siliconed it back on the way Oceanic said. Then a few months later it fell out and the seams started to split and we needed to get a new tank (we used 2x4s to keep it from falling apart while we ran around trying to find a new tank)