Lighting

Four metal halide units are used to provide the main lighting for the corals. Each unit is made from using a reflector, a lamp holder and the power unit.

A fabricated metal box holds the ballasts and ignitors for the metal halides, including built-in contactors and cooling fans.

Aluminium strips bolted together created the lighting fixture holding all the lights, reflectors and wiring harnesses. The rig is suspended from the ceiling on rails, with up/down adjustable pulleys. This allowed the whole rig to be lifted out of the way for tank maintenance, or pulled to the back of the tank to allow changing of lamps etc...

The metal halides lamps are placed strategically to cover only the SPS dominated part of the tank. Light and dark zones are deliberate to allow keeping a mix of light loving SPS and lower light LPS. The added advantage is considerable savings in electricity consumption.

Along with the metal halides a mix T5 high output tubes to lit the lower light zones as well as actinic lighting. Different banks of lights are switched on/off in sequence to provide a more gradual sunrise/sunset event.