How do I stop light from flooding the room

[joekidwell]

Hello, I was thinking of building a half hood to sit on top of the 28 gallon, would this be the most practical way of eliminating the light flooding from the halide?

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[MarAquatic]

Maybe make something like this out of black polycarbonate

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[joseserrano]

Canopy

 

[Vinny Kreyling]

Worth a shot if you don't mind the look.

 

[doonan75]

How much light spill do you have? I'm using halides too and honestly most of the light spill is coming from the tank itself not the fixture. Try mocking up a half hood with cardboard before you commit to the real thing to see if there is much of a difference.

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[doonan75]

My refugium which is LED produces more light spill in my opinion. We have preteen children so it kinda acts as a night light LoL.

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[Sk8r]

Mine (a bowfront) has an 8" shell of thin and flexible black laminate, with a strong right angle pine joint (painted at the meeting of 2 side in the back, and a joint at the 2 front corners, letting the front laminate bow as needed. The trick is, there's a pine 1"x1" piece reinforcing all corners, cut an inch or more short at the bottom, so when you lower the canopy onto the tank, the stubs at corners prop the whole triangular bow and straight sides up ON the tank rim, so you get an inch or more to cover the frame, and the top is left open. Onto that pine stub top, you can lower a plexi or laminate cover shaped to fit the tank, with a feeding hole near the apex of the bow.

You can alter this to fit a rectangular tank: but you might want to go by sections, ie, adding a stub every 2 feet or so, just to be sure it's well-supported, and you could do the removeable top cover in sections. This pseudo-canopy helps with jump-prone fishes, and also slows evaporation slightly. Your sump will in general provide enough evap to handle calcium 'hand' supplementation (ie, no reactor needed.) It cannot support lights, not that strong; but you can rig a prop for them somehow. On one tank, we got a piece of glass for the light kit to sit on, which simply bridges the tank frame, and never touches the canopy itself.