Pure Sunlight over your tank

[O P Ing]

hi.

Assuming the container ends are flat, light will exit at its original angle.

Doh!

Plastic acrylic lens are cheap enough that you don't really want to make a water bubble for this. Check out the acrylic lens for reading, etc. They are cheap and light weight.

 

[delbeek]

Its not even close to more light than nature, unless your right on the equator, like mentioned, you'll have less light as the sun is further away. In Hawaii, like I mentioned, they use both real sun and mh on their Indo reef display because they aren't at the same intensity as Indo.
check out this link to a picture by James Wiseman- http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/ ... CF0012.htm

Just wanted to correct some confusion and misinformation here:

1) The Waikiki Aquarium uses natural light on most of its tanks indoors via acrylic skylights,

2) There are also tanks outside with live coral that get nothing but natural sunlight, levels at their peak are about 2000 uE/m-2/s-1 a few feet under the water. So we certainly have the intensity.

3) We use metal halides inside in addition to natural light because:
a) there are cloudy days,
b) in the winter the days are shorter,
c) due to the roof and the varying angle of the sun during the day and the year, the tanks do not get direct sunlight for more than a few hours,
d) we have night functions.

In Australia they used mh's outside on their Algael Turf Scrubbers. <

That is because the turf scrubbers are shaded and are lit at night only ... reverse daylight cycle.

Montery bay aquarium even utilizes mh's for their local display in conjunction with natural lighting

... for much the same reasons we do ... plus they have a lot of fog too.

Aloha!
JCD

 

[Agu]

Here's a link to "Sunpipes" http://www.sunpipe.com/

Here's Solatubes website, http://www.solatube.com/

And here's solarbright http://www.solarbright.com/Prices.htm

Now that I've moved to sunny Florida I want to try these out with VHO supplementation. But the contractor informed me installing them would be the end of my barrel tile roof (It's old and people walking on it will crack it ) so I'm on hold for now. Unless someone wants to buy me a new roof in the interest of advancing reefkeeping.

Agu