Marine Lighting - Solaris vs. Sunlight

[Marc]

With the rising costs of electricity a couple of us have been investigating an investment into 6ft Solaris LED lighting, but now have also been looking into the possibility of supplementing the bulk of light requirements with Solatube or Skydome skylights.

What are your thoughts? It would seem the outlay would be offset in cost savings in around 3-4 years.

[Woodsy]

Every marine tank I have ever seen that gets even a medium degree of sunlight has massive hair algae problems. Not fun to fix.

[Marc]

The right fish in the tank would have a field day of that though!

Sunlit tanks are becoming very popular ... not many actually seem to be embarking on it however.

[Woodsy]

lol, when you find out what the "right" fish are to get rid of hair algae Mark, make sure to let a brother know! You'll make my job a hell of a lot easier :p

[Marc]

Where's MadDog our resident marine expert :)

[AuS MaDDoG]

Hi Guys,

The cure for Green Hair Algae is the same as the prevention: Starve it into oblivion. Green Hair Algae require not only light, but also nitrates and phosphates in order to survive.
Reduce your nitrates and phosphates and you will eventually be on the path to ridding your aquarium of your hair algae problem.

Cheers
Tony.

[accurist85]

Many coral propagating companies use Natural sunlight... Specially from my experience, the Goniopora came back to life when raised under natural sun light... They colour up nicely with natural light... You can make a DIY stuff to bring the natural light from the roof!

[Lucifer]

If I can, then I would use natural sun light.

As said above, nitrate and phosphate is the main factor in any algae. Remove those and you have no problems.
Rabbit fish and bristletooth tang are pretty good at keeping hair algae at bay.

LED technology for the marine tanks is still at its baby stage. Give it another 3-5yrs and the technology will be much better suited (and cheaper) for marine tanks.

With a 6ft tank, I would suggest 3 x solatubes, 2 x 150w/250w MH in between, and some T5 actinic. The solatubes will keep your corals growing. MH will let you view your tank late afternoon/night. T5 actinic to bring out the colour.