Mirror

[Canadian]

Just an FYI, using fans to cool the air temperature in your hood (eg. blowing fans at your reflector or lamp) as opposed to using fans blowing onto the water's surface to effectively control temp is not one of the best ideas. Cooling the air temperature around the lamp will cause a shift in the spectrum emitted by the lamp. Everyone hates 5500K lamps because they're too yellow, so why would you blow air at your reflector or 6500K lamp therefore causing the color temperature to decrease if you could avoid this arrangement?

Those who actually have experience with MH lighting (incl. HQI) over their reef tanks know that they purchased the lamps and ballasts in an attempt to maximize intensity. Making any effort to diffuse that intensity in an effort to get even distrubution of a lower intensity is clearly counterproductive if you intend to keep light-loving corals alive and healthy. Your only recourse should you choose to diffuse your point source lighting (still can't figure out why on earth you'd want to do that in your reef tank) would be to purchase additional lamps and ballasts in an attempt to compensate for the lost intensity -- go nuts if you've got the money to waste.

I'd like someone to point out to me what the problems with focusing specific bands of higher intensity artificial light into your reef tank are. Before these higher intensity point source lamps were available hobbyists struggled to keep SPS, Tridacnids, etc. alive with diffused light sources, let alone thriving. "Too well lit"? What is it that we're attempting to replicate? The sun? Is the sun overlighting the ocean?

If you want to have evenly distributed light over the entire surface area of your aquarium while also having sufficient intensity to keep light loving corals, put more lamps over your tank.

[ 14 February 2002: Message edited by: Canadian ]</p>