Lighting a 60x30x16 tank on a budget

[ReeferReefer]

A buddy of mine is selling his old tank and I'm thinking about getting it. My only issue is lighting the tank. It's a shallow 125. 60x30x16. I would have mostly softies in the tank.

Is there a good budget way to do this? Will a couple of SB Reef Lights have enough spread? Or will I need two rows of lights for 30 inches?

 

[MSB123]

What does he have now?
I would get 2 rows because of the width

 

[Kampo]

why not utilize the T5s it comes with? could aways add a couple SB reefs to make a "hybrid"

 

[Montiman]

I would just go t5 myself a six bulb t5 is cheap and could grow whatever you want.

 

[ReeferReefer]

why not utilize the T5s it comes with? could aways add a couple SB reefs to make a "hybrid"

They don't have individual reflectors.

I'm currently running a 36 inch 6 bulb t5 with SB sbars hybrid like your talking about. I would just need to get longer units I guess.

 

[jda]

Who cares if they don't have individual reflectors for a softie tank? They will be fine. I would just use them and save your coin for other stuff or for a upgrade if you want to get into higher light stuff.

 

[Kampo]

Who cares if they don't have individual reflectors for a softie tank? They will be fine. I would just use them and save your coin for other stuff or for a upgrade if you want to get into higher light stuff.

yup this, I just scored a cheap retrofit kit without reflectors. I'm honestly just going to build a hanging canopy for my frag tank and line it with reflector tape. put in leds down the center and t5 on either side. leds will do the heavy lifting t5s to fill in spectrum and even out the lighting

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

With the stock lenses in the 16” , the SBreeflight covers about a 20x 13 area from about 12in and gives you 650 par or so at full blast.

So imo, use that to figure the geometry at the top of the tank and figure you may get more spread by hanging them higher. (I like to cover as much of the dimension of top of the tank for best coverage)

You can increase the spread spread by pulling the lenses and get closer to 22 x 15 but expect a 30-40% loss in par. And no, pulling the lens on an Sb doesn’t effect the two year warranty.

IMO , the best for you would be 4 30in models. The cheap would be 2 30in models at 15in.

 

[AbnormalReefer]

Why not use some Chinese black boxes and the t5s if you’re super tight budget wise? They grow coral great. However, you’ll have to sacrifice customization options/premium features like weather effects and peak/spike schedules. However, most come with a “blue” channel (usually combo of UV, Violet, Royal Blue, and Blue) and a “white” channel (usually consists of cool white, green, red, and in some brands, warm white). You can get pretty creative if you ramp/time the channels at different times. You can also modify them a lot, however, I’m not the person to ask for that.

Hope this helps! SB Reef Lights and Reef Brite are great too!

 

[ReeferReefer]

With the stock lenses in the 16” , the SBreeflight covers about a 20x 13 area from about 12in and gives you 650 par or so at full blast.

So imo, use that to figure the geometry at the top of the tank and figure you may get more spread by hanging them higher. (I like to cover as much of the dimension of top of the tank for best coverage)

You can increase the spread spread by pulling the lenses and get closer to 22 x 15 but expect a 30-40% loss in par. And no, pulling the lens on an Sb doesn’t effect the two year warranty.

IMO , the best for you would be 4 30in models. The cheap would be 2 30in models at 15in.

I really like this idea of pulling the lenses. I wouldn't need the full power for what I want to keep anyways. Should make color blending even better too, right?

I just need to save up a bit more for the tank now.