MantisShrimpMan
Active Member
I’m currently in the planning stages of coral stocking- I need to get my light and make sure my tank is keeping corals happy before I fully go ahead. With that said… I have a bit of an unusual idea and I could use some input on how to best attempt to have it come out successful.
My aquascape is an arch structure that was built on a large 1” thick milled foundation rock. So (turn them 90 degrees) my arch is actually a “D”, not a “)”. Given that it has the foundation rock, the room under the arch is stone, not sand bed. And considering that I’m working with a relatively small tank (20G), I’d love to be able to use said space for the addition of more corals.
Unfortunately, the arch does shade the foundation rock quite a bit. However, I believe that MAYBE by both using a bit of supplemental underwater lighting and choosing corals that aren’t particularly light demanding, I could perhaps successfully keep corals under the arch. I’ve been looking at submersible LED solutions, like the ones offered for refugium lighting by tunze and AuqaGadget, and it led me to stumbling across submersible LED rings used for lighting fountains. There are a few offerings along those lines that are actually small enough for me to conceal them into the “roof” of the arch aquascape. Now, these LEDs may not pump out the same PAR numbers that an actual aquarium light does, but I’m moreso looking for them to just help with reducing the shading, not act as standalone lighting. As for the corals, I’ve been looking at corals that are known for being the least light demanding, like cyphastrea, leptos, Zoas. Heck, id even go as far as to include NPS corals in that stocking list, with the logic of “sure, they might not be photosynthetic, but you still want to light them to show off how cool they are!”
Now, here’s where mixing LEDs comes into consideration. The fountain lights I’m looking at don’t come in multicolor options. While I suppose I can put multiple into my rockwork to compensate for this, generally speaking, they’re either blue or a cool white (about 5000K). I tend to prefer the majority of a tank to be closer in appearance to natural sunlight. That being said, I can’t deny that zoa’s and other neon corals look amazing under purely actinic blue.
So, if I were to have the main light be a mix of blues and other channels, while only having a blue channel under the arch, would that look ridiculous? I’ve made a drawing for reference, although I will admit, it is a GROSS oversimplification.
The other thing I‘m wondering about is maybe combining these fountain ring lights concentrically. For example, one company has a 12 LED and a 6 LED model, and the 12 LED model has Outer diameter 2” and inner diameter 1.25”, and the 6 LED model has O.D. 1.25” and I.D. 0.5”. If one ring was blues and the other was whites, and I wired in dimmer switches, it should theoretically allow me some control over the resulting tone of the arch lighting.
If I were to resort to this, would you make the stronger outside light the blue one or the white one, and why?
Overall, I’d like to provide light to the underside of the arch so I can have something like a fluorescent Zoa garden below, but I don‘t want it to look visually unappealing by mixing substantially different color tones.
My aquascape is an arch structure that was built on a large 1” thick milled foundation rock. So (turn them 90 degrees) my arch is actually a “D”, not a “)”. Given that it has the foundation rock, the room under the arch is stone, not sand bed. And considering that I’m working with a relatively small tank (20G), I’d love to be able to use said space for the addition of more corals.
Unfortunately, the arch does shade the foundation rock quite a bit. However, I believe that MAYBE by both using a bit of supplemental underwater lighting and choosing corals that aren’t particularly light demanding, I could perhaps successfully keep corals under the arch. I’ve been looking at submersible LED solutions, like the ones offered for refugium lighting by tunze and AuqaGadget, and it led me to stumbling across submersible LED rings used for lighting fountains. There are a few offerings along those lines that are actually small enough for me to conceal them into the “roof” of the arch aquascape. Now, these LEDs may not pump out the same PAR numbers that an actual aquarium light does, but I’m moreso looking for them to just help with reducing the shading, not act as standalone lighting. As for the corals, I’ve been looking at corals that are known for being the least light demanding, like cyphastrea, leptos, Zoas. Heck, id even go as far as to include NPS corals in that stocking list, with the logic of “sure, they might not be photosynthetic, but you still want to light them to show off how cool they are!”
Now, here’s where mixing LEDs comes into consideration. The fountain lights I’m looking at don’t come in multicolor options. While I suppose I can put multiple into my rockwork to compensate for this, generally speaking, they’re either blue or a cool white (about 5000K). I tend to prefer the majority of a tank to be closer in appearance to natural sunlight. That being said, I can’t deny that zoa’s and other neon corals look amazing under purely actinic blue.
So, if I were to have the main light be a mix of blues and other channels, while only having a blue channel under the arch, would that look ridiculous? I’ve made a drawing for reference, although I will admit, it is a GROSS oversimplification.
The other thing I‘m wondering about is maybe combining these fountain ring lights concentrically. For example, one company has a 12 LED and a 6 LED model, and the 12 LED model has Outer diameter 2” and inner diameter 1.25”, and the 6 LED model has O.D. 1.25” and I.D. 0.5”. If one ring was blues and the other was whites, and I wired in dimmer switches, it should theoretically allow me some control over the resulting tone of the arch lighting.
If I were to resort to this, would you make the stronger outside light the blue one or the white one, and why?
Overall, I’d like to provide light to the underside of the arch so I can have something like a fluorescent Zoa garden below, but I don‘t want it to look visually unappealing by mixing substantially different color tones.
