I am finally starting to put some coral in my tank and I am starting to get more concerned about my lighting layout. My goals are to promote an even distribution of par over my tank and avoid shadowing as the coral grow.
The inside dimensions of my tank at 84” x 36” with 27” of water. The tank has three access holes that are 25” wide.
The current lighting is 3x Ecotech Radion G4 Pro’s with no supplemental lighting. Each radions is currently centered over each access hole with the pucks parallel with the front. This seems to be fine currently but I already have shadowing on one side of frags just due to the nature of LED lighting. This leads to one side of a coral having great coloration and the other looking dull.
My question is how to best orient my lighting with further upgrades. I just purchased 4 additional radions. 2 are going to be used over a frag tank and the other two I planed on using on the main display. I also plan on adding t5 lighting to the main tank for added covereage and less shadowing.
I need help with how to best make use of these lights. Would you just add two more lights on the same bar and change the orientation of the light where the pucks are perpendicular to the front. Another option is to buy another rms bar and add 3 lights over the display tank. This would be two radions over each access hole and centers every 12” front to back. This option would equate to two radions over ever 27”x36” are of the tank. I’m just concerned that the cross bracing in this case may still shadow some spots and I may have some par drop between access holes.
Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated.
The inside dimensions of my tank at 84” x 36” with 27” of water. The tank has three access holes that are 25” wide.
The current lighting is 3x Ecotech Radion G4 Pro’s with no supplemental lighting. Each radions is currently centered over each access hole with the pucks parallel with the front. This seems to be fine currently but I already have shadowing on one side of frags just due to the nature of LED lighting. This leads to one side of a coral having great coloration and the other looking dull.
My question is how to best orient my lighting with further upgrades. I just purchased 4 additional radions. 2 are going to be used over a frag tank and the other two I planed on using on the main display. I also plan on adding t5 lighting to the main tank for added covereage and less shadowing.
I need help with how to best make use of these lights. Would you just add two more lights on the same bar and change the orientation of the light where the pucks are perpendicular to the front. Another option is to buy another rms bar and add 3 lights over the display tank. This would be two radions over each access hole and centers every 12” front to back. This option would equate to two radions over ever 27”x36” are of the tank. I’m just concerned that the cross bracing in this case may still shadow some spots and I may have some par drop between access holes.
Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated.
