Suntubes for your tank - An alternate light source.

[You should ask bulldogger. He looked into doing this. Algae should not be any problem. Light in the right spectrum does not cause algae.]
 
[If i owned a house and had the money i would love to set up a small tank and put one this Sun Tubes over it just to see if it worked. Imagine the possibilities, you would never worry if you have enough lighting or not and you would never need a light controller wow. Plus you electric bill would be lighter. Man if I only had a house!!!!]
 
[While at MACNA this year we spent alot of time talking to Dr. Mac, whom is building new facilities. Part is totally a greenhouse and on another part he uses sola tubes for light. He says that he never has seen an algae problem from using natural sunlight. Here is link to his site and you can click on new facilites if you want to see a lot of pictures of how it is setup.
Dr. Mac's Homepage
By the way I would love to make a roadtrip to Maryland and check out his place and not pay shipping.]
 
[there is a thread on reef central (http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56125) that discusses this very issue - i think it would be great and algae should not be a problem - the only issue is the intensity of light we receive here - not as ideal as arizona or colorado plus coupled with the quality of air levels, it is not ideal = but, i do plan on seriously considering this down the road when I build a house - you can purchase the sola-tubes at home depot also.]
 
[
the only issue is the intensity of light we receive here - not as ideal as arizona or colorado plus coupled with the quality of air levels said:
gmacy is right on the mark. I couldn't find enough facts about the acutual light intensity. Too many people were saying that the tubes were only enough to supplement MH. If that is indeed the case then I can't see the reason to add the cost on top of MH when MH is all that is really needed.]
Click to expand...
 
[There's nothing different about the "Aquarium Sola Tube" and the Sola Tubes you can buy at HD for 100 bucks. (Except the price, I wouldnt be surprised if they tack on 50 bucks) they have an acrylic dome with polished aluminum reflector tube down to a fitting, which you would remove or change to polycarbonate for a reef.

I have looked into this, and even seen a few tanks with
Solar lighting. If you look at my plywwod tank thread you can see what I'm doing which is a 2'x4' skylight, but I'm replacing the bronze acrylic with Polycarbonate, which is the same stuff they use for greenhouses.

Here's the thread that convinced me to do it:

500 Gallon Natural Light

I still plan to use 3 250-DE's but only 4-6 hours a day. as opposed to 8-10. It will make a huge difference in both electricty (6 Amps) and bulb relacement (2 years as opposed to 1)]
 
[i think that same is making a good point - in our location, we probably would have a hard time using sola-tubes as the only source for lights, but, we could definitely use them to supplement and this will help to decrease the cost over time - plus, in the event of a power outage, you would still have some light!!]
 
[I don't think you'll get 2 years out of the MH bulb. The life of the bulb is shortened everytime you fire it. If your still firing the bulb every day I would think you will still need to replace them every year if not sooner.]
 
[I imagine that one issue would be to set up a tank so that the lights are there for part of the day, yet don't block the rays shining down the rest of the time.

Perhaps a light rack on a timer would be good, to roll it into place when it is scheduled, then retract at the end of the day until it is needed again.]
 
[I have two tubes in my living room if you would like to come judge for yourself just pm me.]
 
[To address the concern that Marc brought up - maybe you could contact the company and see if they have an angle attachment - that way you could place the two tubes coming down at the ends of the tank and pointing inward (angled) towards the middle of the tank - provide some supplementation and still allow you to use a regular light setup.]
 
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