SolaTube for reef lighting

Trying to open up a discussion about the possibility of doing 2 solatubes with 4x 54 watt on a 120g reef, SPS dominated.

I know it can be done, but my thing is, I have never seen a tank lit by natural sunlight in person.

I really like the idea of lighting a reef with natural sunlight, however, we in the hobby have an un-natural idea of what the coloration should be of our coral, and our tank overall (14-20K)

So my major concers:

Will there be any major changes in coral coloration?
Would natural sunlight + t5 supplementation be simply too much light?


Any input would be awesome, thanks all!

 

Bump for the night time group

 

I'd love to see you do this. I've always been a fan of solatubes.

Not sure about the colors as I have not seen this in person either but I like your idea of T5 supplementation to round it out.

You can see a cool solatube tank on this thread that will give you an idea on colors:
http://www.3reef.com/forums/reef-lighting/solatube-display-oc-fair-117533.html

(PM me if you do a build thread on this)

matt

 

there shouldnt be much of a difference in coloration just it wouldn't show as much fluorescence as say 10-20k or color supplemented lighting but check this build out if you want to check someone out with a natural light(actually uses the sun!) sps dominant tank...i know you mean bulbs not the sun but just had to add that bit in

heres the build thread i read the whole thing but you can skim through for the pics...the most recent pics were updated probably in the past few weeks

Adee's new build - Reef Central Online Community

 

Hey Matt,
Thanks for the reply. It was really my dad, who was checking out our tank the other night and asked, " Why don't you guys capture the natural sun, since your trying to mimic it with your lights." that sparked the idea for me. I loved the idea of natural sunlight, but was not on board with the brown look of overly yellow lighting, so I figured adding some blues would be great.

The link was awesome, so thank you for that. I think I am going to contact them and see what they recommend and what not. Just get some inside prospective on the whole thing.

I'll definitely hit you up if we move forward with the build

Awesome, thanks for the input. I really love the 15k-20k look and the color of my SPS would take a hit I am sure, but I feel like the blues could easily round out the spectrum. I am majorly concerned however that will natural sun + 216 watts of T5 it might be overkill.

I'll certainly take an extra careful read through the whole thread, and anything else you may find would be awesome. Thanks for the link!

 

Glad to hear it. Keep me posted.
I'll check out that RC link too.

 

adees corals look awesome so i dont know how much of a hit the coloration truly would take but the 216w is a little overkill but can probably be done with proper acclimation