Large reef lighting -natural?

[Goofnut]

This isn't directly related to nanos, but since many of you have large reef tanks, I figured I would pose this question here.

 

I'm considering buying a house in the next year or so, and I'd really like to have a 300-500g tank in it. I plan on either building it into a wall or maybe building a room divider with it.

 

My question is in regards to natural lighting. I was thinking that I would put in a couple of skylight "tubes" to funnel some sunlight into the tank and supplement it with other light spectrums as necessary. Has anyone here ever done this? If you could direct me to some information sites on using this lighting method, that would be helpful as well.

 

One concern I have is: will I lose an excessive amount of intensity with the numerous reflections down the tube? I live in Texas, so we get a good deal of bright sunshine, but I'm concerned about winter/bad weather days. Will the diminished sunlight on these days (or even a week or more) cause problems with the corals? I presume that a natural reef experiences periods of decreased sunlight availability due to clouds, storms, etc., but not sure if their increased intensity during normal periods would make up for these days. I could buy halides and keep them in reserve if necessary.

 

My desire for using natural lighting is driven by a desire to reduce electricity bills (definately HIGH around here) and I'm also thinking that the heat generated in the tank will be lower. Perhaps I could install light filters to remove the IR spectrum??

 

Please let me know what you guys think of this

[reefskunk]

your idea sounds great, but you still would need to purchase lighting for the system, and lots of it

[Toyfreek]

Search solatubes or solar tubes?on reefcentral another guy in TX did it and documented the whole thing with pics.

It can be done but daylight is really yellow he tried a blue filter and ended up getting actinics to suppliment if I remember right.

Toy

[Goofnut]

Coolness Lots of info in there I'll be reading for quite a while! Anyone have firsthand experience?

[dattack]

Here's the current thread. I am not sure there are too many people out there with experience in terms of reef lighting but they are looking at it.

 

http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showt...&threadid=56125

[Goofnut]

Well, I read through the whole thread and there's a lot of good info in there, for sure. I am concerned about heat from the "focused" light coming down the tubes. Can anyone think of a good way to filter out some of the IR spectrum without dramatically decreasing the intensity? The focused beams don't seem horrible, but maybe I'd add some parabolic diffusers? -maybe that'd just decrease the intensity even more, but I think that would even out the light and reduce potential bleaching. Still, I think the heat would be less than what would be experienced with MH lights.

 

If I were to implement this system, I'd want to supplement the actinic spectrum. I might even run an additional small MH or two in the 10,000K+ range.

 

The photoperiod also wouldn't match up with my optimal viewing hours (I'm a night owl) but perhaps I could add some automatic shutters on timers to block out the morning light and move the photoperiod to meet my desires