solatubes

[mercenary-grunt]

hasanybody tried solatubes??? would they work for coral?? i have a 180g DT, fish only w/ anemones.

 

[colin779]

I would guess they would work. Is that a 6' tank? Depending on the diameter of them (18-24 inches?) I would guess you'd want 3 for the tank. Not sure how bright they would be or what the light would look like by the time it hit the tank. You would probably still need to run actinic supplementation too.

I don't have any experience with them, that's just what I'm guessing so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong =)

 

[eww]

Solatube allow almost 100% of the sunlight through them. They are about the best for accurate light transfer out there. They come in 10" & 14" diameter for home use. I would say on a standard 180 I would use 3 of them, one over each 1/3 of the tank. You will definitely want actinic supplementation if you want color pop out of your corals though. Natural sunlight just doesn't give that.

 

[Peppie]

So living in The Great North West . At times we can go days with out seeing the sun Shine. Would that amount of light effect our coral growth. Or should I say, is the lack of light going to hurt coral growth?

Or am i way off base. Sun light is sun light, clouds or no clouds

 

[Sasquatch]

So living in The Great North West . At times we can go days with out seeing the sun Shine. Would that amount of light effect our coral growth. Or should I say, is the lack of light going to hurt coral growth?

Or am i way off base. Sun light is sun light, clouds or no clouds

Thats exactly what I was thinking lol, maybe stick a MH inside

 

[trido]

About five years ago a guy in Issaquah had them over his large tank. They weren't enough to grow corals and he had to run MH for a few hours a day to make up for the lack of intense sun.
Not that solar tubes wont work over a tank. Just that they wont work in the Pacific Northwest. In Southern Cali, probably.

Up here we have too many cloudy days for starters, then in the winter, our sun is just too indirect to have any intensity. Kinda like when I would sit in the sun for several hours on the Bering Sea in July and get absolutely zero sun tan.

 

[mercenary-grunt]

Ahh ok thank you. so would it create ideal light for alge in a fish only? And anemones are out of the Q then too?

Sent from my MB525 using Tapatalk

 

[BigAl07]

A local reefer here on the East coast (North Carolina) has them over his 180 now and he runs a LOT of supplementation except during the summer. During the summer he runs "some" supplementation but the rest of the year it's a LOT! You have to keep in mind that unless you get really creative with your design and install the sunlight is only striking the solatube at an optimal angle a short time of the day during part of the year.

The local guy's coral turned very brown and had almost ZERO growth until he added supplementation. That sort of defeats the purpose IMHO.

 

[mercenary-grunt]

Still curious on fish only.

 

[Sasquatch]

Still curious on fish only.

if it varied in intensity it would be very nice, Ive been using Para Lights for my fish only tanks, 1 watt led's 12v cheap and nice, red,yellow,blue, white and soft white, lots of different lengths