Natrual sunlight

[Acolin]

It is awfully hard to duplicate the spectrum and intensity of natural sunlight over the reef at the variety of depths from which corals are collected. With all of the other difficult to achieve parameters required for successful hard and soft coral propagation, like chilly water temperatures, I am surprised that more people are not advocating natural indirect light for reef tanks. Seems to me that if more live coral displays were exposed to indirect natural sunlight, the corals would flourish and half of the money put into ultra-powerful lighting systems could go into modest chillers.

Is anybody’s aquarium kissed by natural sunlight, if only for brief periods of the day? How long is it exposed? What direction is the sun? How do you think this exposure effects the hard and soft corals? How does this aquarium compare to other systems you had that did not have natural sunlight exposure?

 

[benf]

I was going to go that route, but was discouraged by some that it would be an increase in algae and i hate cleaning it as it is.

 

[Ah64av8tor]

My 65 gets morning sun with no ill effects and the 150 will get a lot of morning sun.

Check out this Therad

 

[conchead]

My 120 gets morning sunlight,on one end,and the fish that like algae like to graze that glass,,,,,,,free food

 

[triggerfish1976]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9191238#post9191238 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Ah64av8tor
My 65 gets morning sun with no ill effects and the 150 will get a lot of morning sun.

Check out this Therad

One entire end of my tank gets natural sunlight since it sits approx. 2 feet from a large window. I actually like it because it provides a more natural light cycle since I do not turn my T-5's and MH's on until 11am once the sun is above the house.
Eventually I would like to use Solartubes in place of MH's and just have T-5's as supplements.

 

[ReefArtist]

My 75G get sun on one side and it penatrates from the edge to about 1/3. The light is so bright and clear looking. It's really fun to watch my fish react to the rays, it seems they're playing in them. It does heat up the tank though, so only during the cooler days can I have it open.

 

[markandkristen]

at nolans in lakeland they had a saltwater pond. and they kept all kind of stuff. in it from clams to acros. just a thought

 

[ryan115]

One of the main problems with using sunlight as a primary light source (while it is useful as sumplemental) is the intensity of the light that gets to your tank. Even as far south as we are here on TB, the light intensity is not near what it is at the equator, or in sub-equatorial regions. Also the light primarily comes in either the early morning or late after noon, when the suns rays are at the weakest, you never get that midday ful intensity sun. It can be set up and I believe Calfo had a section on that in his Coral Propagtion book. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Po-vegas reefer]

my 125 gets about 4 hrs of natural light and everything loves it. All of my coral polyps open up much earlier now since I started opening the shade. I was originally worried about algae growth but like someone stated earlier my fish and snails love the extra grazing material

 

[Acolin]

where and what is Nolans?
what temperature flucuatation are you measuring, or does the chiller keep the tank cool enough?

 

[ladyfsu]

Since this thread I've starting pulling up the blinds. I get sun on my tank from 330 until about 5. Curious to see what will happen if anything.