TimeConsumer
Active member
As well all know lighting is one of the most important part of a thriving reef aquarium, and a good portion of our budget goes towards it. But many people take their expensive light setups and lose some of the light available to the reef without even knowing it. Here are three ways to get every last lumen to your animals:
1) Clean your lights! It sounds simple, but many people neglect this step far too often. Splash shields, lenses, bulbs, and reflectors can easily get a thin coating of saltwater scattering and absorbing our expensive light away from the water. But if you don't already know, be careful with Windex, it's ammonia! I like to clean my splash shield on my T5 unit daily with RO/DI water. Just a quick swipe across the acrylic takes me a few seconds a day and keeps my light going where I want it. I give it a more thorough Windex cleaning bi-weekly (off the tank of course).
2) Keep the glass clean inside the tank. It may sound unrelated, but thanks to the properties of total internal reflection this improves PAR drastically. Most of the light that strikes the glass from our lights is greater than the critical angle needed for TIR, so it never exits the tank. In this article Advanced Aquarist measured this effect when looking at T5 lamps (see "The Background Effect"), but it applies for all lighting sources. So for the cost of a day scraping the coralline off your back glass, you get a huge PAR boost!
3) Cooling. T5, MH, and LED all perform better when they are running cooler. Stick a couple of fans in your canopy, or point one at the fixture. It's a simple step (and free with a couple of spare computer fans and an old cellphone charger) to help improve the output with little monthly maintenance. If you already have built-in fans on your lights, make sure you aren't suffocating them. This will also help improve the lifespan of the components drastically.
If you didn't already know this information, I hope this helps you maximize the output of your lights. Happy reefing.
1) Clean your lights! It sounds simple, but many people neglect this step far too often. Splash shields, lenses, bulbs, and reflectors can easily get a thin coating of saltwater scattering and absorbing our expensive light away from the water. But if you don't already know, be careful with Windex, it's ammonia! I like to clean my splash shield on my T5 unit daily with RO/DI water. Just a quick swipe across the acrylic takes me a few seconds a day and keeps my light going where I want it. I give it a more thorough Windex cleaning bi-weekly (off the tank of course).
2) Keep the glass clean inside the tank. It may sound unrelated, but thanks to the properties of total internal reflection this improves PAR drastically. Most of the light that strikes the glass from our lights is greater than the critical angle needed for TIR, so it never exits the tank. In this article Advanced Aquarist measured this effect when looking at T5 lamps (see "The Background Effect"), but it applies for all lighting sources. So for the cost of a day scraping the coralline off your back glass, you get a huge PAR boost!
3) Cooling. T5, MH, and LED all perform better when they are running cooler. Stick a couple of fans in your canopy, or point one at the fixture. It's a simple step (and free with a couple of spare computer fans and an old cellphone charger) to help improve the output with little monthly maintenance. If you already have built-in fans on your lights, make sure you aren't suffocating them. This will also help improve the lifespan of the components drastically.
If you didn't already know this information, I hope this helps you maximize the output of your lights. Happy reefing.
