Best depth for a shallow reef? 30"X18"X ?????

[duganderson]

I'm building a tank that is 30"X18"x shallow. I'm thinking of going somewhere in the 12" to 15" deep range for a mix of softies, lps, a couple easy SPS and fish and inverts.

What do you think would be the best depth and why? I'd love to here your experiences with shallow tanks?

 

[kharmaguru]

What lighting are you planning because that affects your choice. For example my frag tank is only 9 inches deep, so it's been hard not to have too much light for LPS. Since you are going mixed reef, I would say the deepest you are comfortable with - 15, 16 inches to give a variety of par values.

This guy has a nice setup:

 

[duganderson]

Currently, I'm planning to use 1 Noopsyche Pro v3 to intentionally have uneven light coverage to have variable par.

Are you suggesting that the difference in depth from say 9" to 16" deep has a big impact on Par. I would not think that 6 inches would have that much impact (but my assumption may be totally incorrect.)

Yes, Danny's Aquarium is stunning. I've watched a few videos about that tank but thank you for sharing.

 

[kharmaguru]

Are you suggesting that the difference in depth from say 9" to 16" deep has a big impact on Par

I'm suggesting that it limits your ability for coral placement. If you have 300+ par for your SPS, it makes it very hard to get down to 100 par for your LPS and softies when you only have 9 inches of depth.

My frag tank is lit with T5 and I found it very easy to overpower LPS with just 4 bulbs and some accent blue leds. I basically run 2 bulbs most of the day and all 4 for only 2 hours mostly to satisfy the few SPS in the tank.

 

[duganderson]

If lighting was the glitch, I would probably skip the SPS and go with what looks good, is easily to work with, leaves enough space for rock and coral, etc. If I do SPS, I would only do lower light ones like Birdsnest and maybe Montis