[christyf5]

I have the lumenarc minis and find they work really well closer to the surface. They're still very efficient farther off the surface as well but I like 'em up close and can really get some wild colors out of my corals with them closer to the surface. Lucky I don't have any heat issues though.

I did have a lumenbrite reflector that I bought when I was upgrading the tank from 2MH to 3, however I didn't take into account the "depth" (height?) of the reflector which was considerably more than the lumenarcs and would have required a lot of farting around in building the light rack. I ended up selling the lumenbrite right after I found a (local-ish) source for the lumenarcs.

I think the lumenbrite reflectors are designed to be fairly far from the surface and provide a larger spread of light than the lumenarcs but I never tested it out. Its design certainly seems to me that it would allow for better spread of light if it was higher up as it is kind of circular shaped (hexagonal or octagonal) which means more focused light up close.