How high do you keep your LEDs?

[acropora4u]

Maybe this isn’t the right forum, but I was in orlando by world wide corals and the LEDs were way above the reefs- makes me think mine are way to low !!

 

[Fish Styx]

 

[SteveMM62Reef]

Mine are just off the glass top. I’m sure most hobbyists don’t have lights that powerful. They have them up high to minimize the Salt Exposure.

 

[Slocke]

Most LEDs are designed to work about a foot over your tank. It should say in the manual what their optimum height is.

 

[Slocke]

It sounds like the ops lights are:

 

[gbroadbridge]

Because light intensity follows the inverse square law, the higher the lights the less difference between PAR at the surface and the bottom of the tank.

You decide height based on how you want light levels to drop off from top to bottom of the tank, which depends on coral requirements.

 

[acropora4u]

Thanks all.

 

[Project1004]

Thanks all.

From my understanding is that they do this because they need to move things in and out the tank all the time…. More broader coverage means light fixture as well. You can achieve this by using hanging kits. I probably do this when I get to move the tank to paint the wall sometime this year. Looks nicer I think personally.

 

[Marco_99]

Multiple Kessil a360xe @ 8.5-9 inches above top tank glass. They were at about 12 inches but light spill was too much

 

[Science/G]

It really all depends on the lights. Look up the recommended height for the manufacturer. I think brstv has done quite a bit of research here, and has recommendations for optimal light fixture levels. What kind of lights are they?

 

[DenverSaltyFarm]

they are probably running high intensity lense kits on the radions. most coral farms do that to be able to work on the tanks more easily

 

[Dburr1014]

Mine are in a canopy, 11/12 inches is all I have.
No light spill either.

 

[DanyL]

It's already been said here - for tanks where you need to put you hands in a lot, it is far more convenient to have the fixtures high above the tank so they won't get in your way.

For example, both my display tank as well as my frag tank use the same fixtures - but they are hanged 12" above the display, and 20" above the frag tank, using a slightly different configuration and intensities to achieve a similar spread and PAR numbers.

 

[Reef Puncher]

shouldnt be a guess. use a par meter. if your par is fine. keep it where its at. if your par is too high, lower intensity or raise them up. WWC keeps it high because they have SOOOOO many high power lights, they are putting out a ton of par and they want wide spread.
mine are about 11" above, my kessil is about 8" above because i needed more par in one particular spot.

 

[Hooz]

Lights, more specifically, lenses are designed to illuminate a certain size area. Mounting height can vary based on having a larger or smaller area to illuminate.

Say you're lighting a 24" x 24" square, and you have a light with a 90 degree lens. The light will need to be 12" above the water to illuminate the whole area.

Now, say you have a light with a 120 degree lens. You would only need the light mounted 7" high to illuminate the same 24" area.

A light with a 40 degree lens would need to be 33" above the water to light the whole 24" area.

Then you run into other issues... Like, the further away the light is, the lower the intensity. You can get around that, though, by simply adding more lights over the same area.

A lot of the WWC tanks aren't setup with a budget or efficiency in mind. They can afford to put double the number of lights required to compensate for the higher than standard mounting heights. Mounting heights that they need for convenience (getting in and out of the tanks all the time) or aesthetics (on the big display tanks it just looks cooler).

In a nutshell, your lights should be mounted according to what they are designed to do. If you want them to do something other than that, then you need to be prepared to add more lights, or switch to different lights to achieve the same results.

 

[X-37B]

2 radion systems at 8-9", standard mount.
2 Photon systems 1 with orphek bars. Both are 14" off the surface.