glass tops
 

I am wondering about the choice to put a glass top on my reef tank or leave it bare? What are the pros and cons of each.

I am just setting up and will be running a sunpod MH fixture (2 x 150W).

thanks.

Pros:

Less Evaporation therefor more stable salinity

Cons:

May break as it heats up, unless your lights are high (not likely with a sunpod). Most glass tops are only thin 3mm glass that cannot stand that type of regular expansion / contraction due to heating / cooling.

Will cause tank temp to skyrocket. With less evaporation comes more heat as evaporation cools the tank.

Poor light penetration. Will get lots of salt creep, and dust ect, causing light to reflect instead of penetrate through the glass.

Annoying. Every time you want to get in the tank you need to move the lid - especially annoying if your fixture is right above the tank not letting you flip it up.

I have a 3mm sheet of glass on top of my tank and as Todd mentioned a couple annoying things are constant salt creep at the back, gets annoying sometimes when doing maintenance.

on the other hand as far as temperature goes, my lights are on 12 hours a day and my temperature is always stable at 27, whether the lights are on or off, so no problems with temperature.I havent noticed any disruption of light with the glass top. Life saver to have when you got jumpy fish like gobys and fairy wrasse, or really aggressive eaters.

almost positive i'll have to ditch the glass top for eggcrate when i switch to 400 watt