sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
I'm a bit incapacitated today... I looked down at the counter, and everything was aligned wrong or something and I pinched a nerve or ruptured a disc, well 4 advil later I was laying on my back on the couch staring at the ceiling thinking about the lighting on my anemone/soft tank since bending my head to watch tv was out even... although I do remember those original commercials for flat screens when they came out and they showed one mounted on the ceiling... well n/m that 
Well 4 more advil made it tolerable to move (still painful mind you), so I thought I'd run this by people... I got Flexaril on standby though!
The tank is a LeeMar (that will be Miketastically modified.. er fixed since the bottom glass was broken). It's a not quite a cube, 32" long x 24" wide x 24" tall. The corals in here will not be stony by any sense, in fact my rose anemones will be the dominate feature (I'm up to 8 at last count, all from the same specimen), so lighting needs to be a TAD intense... maybe not stony intense but somewhat intense, softies will be... well after I cull the herd won't be that much of a light concern of mine.
Regardless what direction I go, it will be a DIY project where I'll buy reflectors/ballasts etc, I don't really want "a fixture" to go over it, since those typically cost more than the parts they're made of by a factor of 2 at the least. (with some exceptions).
Also an important them for me will be very limited intense lighting, i.e. I want it similar to my stony tank, where all the lights (or halides if the case may be) will be on for a few hours a day at most, then blue Plus and actinic bulbs will go on/off in succession around that. So whether I go halides, or t5s, or Tony can fix me up a useful LED system there needs to be a transition from really bright to not so bright, to dim.
Idea #1: My original plan, I have a 175W ballast (a few of them actually), a lumenarc Mini reflector I won from the PGS talk raffle, and 4- 24" T5s surround it, 2 - ATi blue plus, 2 - UVl Super Actinic. This tank size makes lighting a pain, since I'm pretty much stuck with 24" bulbs if I want linear fluorescents. The idea is the Actinics are on early, then the blue plus, finally the MH fires up for 3-4 hours, then blue's off, finally actinics. This would be the cheapest alternative because with the exception of the ATi bulbs and T5 ballasts, I have everything.
Idea #2: Multiple T5s across the top... I could do 8 of them front to back or side to side, no problem. The "high light" would be all of them on, then every couple hours turn them off two at a time. A problem with this is going route is bulb replacement, as them 24" suckers are at most a few bucks less than a 54w bulb, so 8 (or 6 or whatever) of them adds up in a hurry. Reflectors aren't an issue since I'd buy a a 48" one (or use the ones I have) and chop them in half! As far as power goes, sure it'll use a little less power, but compared to the price of the bulbs, not enough to make it economical. It might give me the widest range as far as colors, but again this is an anemone tank, with softies I really don't care about so spectrum is not so much a concern as long as it has the blues and/or actinic it'll make things fluoresce.
Idea #3: Tony whips up a high tech LED setup, ultra cheap, and super cool... actually just joking on this, I don't know enough about the state of the art of LEDs to know if this would be enough, plus they're pretty damn pricy.
Other ideas?
Well 4 more advil made it tolerable to move (still painful mind you), so I thought I'd run this by people... I got Flexaril on standby though!The tank is a LeeMar (that will be Miketastically modified.. er fixed since the bottom glass was broken). It's a not quite a cube, 32" long x 24" wide x 24" tall. The corals in here will not be stony by any sense, in fact my rose anemones will be the dominate feature (I'm up to 8 at last count, all from the same specimen), so lighting needs to be a TAD intense... maybe not stony intense but somewhat intense, softies will be... well after I cull the herd won't be that much of a light concern of mine.
Regardless what direction I go, it will be a DIY project where I'll buy reflectors/ballasts etc, I don't really want "a fixture" to go over it, since those typically cost more than the parts they're made of by a factor of 2 at the least. (with some exceptions).
Also an important them for me will be very limited intense lighting, i.e. I want it similar to my stony tank, where all the lights (or halides if the case may be) will be on for a few hours a day at most, then blue Plus and actinic bulbs will go on/off in succession around that. So whether I go halides, or t5s, or Tony can fix me up a useful LED system
there needs to be a transition from really bright to not so bright, to dim.Idea #1: My original plan, I have a 175W ballast (a few of them actually
), a lumenarc Mini reflector I won from the PGS talk raffle, and 4- 24" T5s surround it, 2 - ATi blue plus, 2 - UVl Super Actinic. This tank size makes lighting a pain, since I'm pretty much stuck with 24" bulbs if I want linear fluorescents. The idea is the Actinics are on early, then the blue plus, finally the MH fires up for 3-4 hours, then blue's off, finally actinics. This would be the cheapest alternative because with the exception of the ATi bulbs and T5 ballasts, I have everything.Idea #2: Multiple T5s across the top... I could do 8 of them front to back or side to side, no problem. The "high light" would be all of them on, then every couple hours turn them off two at a time. A problem with this is going route is bulb replacement, as them 24" suckers are at most a few bucks less than a 54w bulb, so 8 (or 6 or whatever) of them adds up in a hurry. Reflectors aren't an issue since I'd buy a a 48" one (or use the ones I have) and chop them in half!
As far as power goes, sure it'll use a little less power, but compared to the price of the bulbs, not enough to make it economical. It might give me the widest range as far as colors, but again this is an anemone tank, with softies I really don't care about so spectrum is not so much a concern as long as it has the blues and/or actinic it'll make things fluoresce.Idea #3: Tony whips up a high tech LED setup, ultra cheap, and super cool... actually just joking on this, I don't know enough about the state of the art of LEDs to know if this would be enough, plus they're pretty damn pricy.
Other ideas?
