Need help BAD on lighting decession PLEASE guys...

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XXFirefighter

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Sep 17, 2003
Messages
1,313
Location
Lompoc, Ca
Aquaclear Aquatics HQI fixture with 2 150 halides and 2 30 watt atinitcs
or
My already own 260 wall PC Coral life with 2 Actinics and 2 10k bulbs...

I own the Coralife fixture and my LFS knows I was lookin for some halides... So he got the hqi set up as a trade, well he offered me the halide set up for 100 bucks plus my fixture as trade... I Was like ok sure, let me try the hqi at home for a day...

HATED IT... I made some legs 7 in tall and set the hqi on that, HUGE SHADOWS and bad dark spots... Cut the legs down to 3 in. LITTLE better, huge dark spots in the ends of my tank. Now it's not a big tank only a 60 gallon tank... So then I put the hqi on the top of the tank... still a little better, but NOT happy at all, the ends of the tank are dark, bad shadows under rock still and well ya....

I put my fixture back on and NOWHERE near as bright I have even lighting and everything looks GOOD !

Was it something I did or just the bad reflectors of this fixture? Can't find ANY info on it... I want hqi set up bad but not if the tanks looks like it does, sorry can't even post 1 pic, wife has camera in florida :(
 
Your sig says 55 but you say 60. Whats the lenght of the tank and how many center braces does it have? The shadows is something that MH will produce. Often these are acutally more desirable than flat even lighting over the entire tank.

MH will light a good 2' square area so depending on how the bulbs are located as far as how far they are from the ends of your tank you might see shadows on the edges.

The shadows is a result the light originating from the single our double points of light where as on the florecent tubes you have light extending from the entire lenght of the bulb. Of course adding more florecent to the fixture can help mask the shadows.
 
I took the fixture back to the LFS...
HE didn't belive what I was saying...
So we set it up on his frag tank...
HE called the guy who traded the light to come back to the shop and pick it up... No deal... Light is complete trash...
 
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