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Solatubes

Interesting....need to look more into it. Curious as to light degradation, light concentration, and how much work it would take to set up/use.
 
I know people in the sw aquarium hobby have used these, sometimes in a 2 story house with the aquarium in the basement, to light an aquarium. IIRC, the 14" tube is about equal to a 400w MH on a tank.. Some people have installed 3 side by side to light a 180g (6' long, so each tube handles about a 24x24 footprint).

They are amazingly bright for using no electricity...
 
The most important part is the collector. I'm sure you can build something similar to an 80% efficiency by comparison and its a simple design. I'm surprised they're using a tube collector, but its probably due to how cheap the design can be. I was looking for using fiber optic bundles with a collector to be able to move much much more light to the destination in any direction or shape. They're using them to light up rooms for people, but I havent seen an application for anything else. There are more things that I can think of. Somebody needs to stick a par meter under one.
 
megahurts said:
Somebody needs to stick a par meter under one.
Click to expand...

Lol they have..

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1887250&highlight=solatube+par

and they got 85%-90% of the par outside..

Another link to some readings (and pics) here:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1685474&highlight=solatube+par

The guys in that hobby have successfully kept many SPS corals (notably difficult, and corals usually require MH lighting to keep), and not only have they kept them, but they look better than before.. We try to imitate the sun, but nothing beats it!
 
I know a guy that uses Solatubes to keep his SPS corals alive. He actually has a beautiful and healthy reef tank going. Here is the link to his tank
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1561945

Actually this is my tank so if anyone has any questions regarding solatubes let me know.
 
I worked on a veterinary hospital where the operating rooms were lit primarily by these things, and they are amazing. They said that the surgeons' eyes don't become as distressed as they do under artificial light during long surgeries.

If you plan on installing one, buy yourself some oxy-actetylene cutting goggles, otherwise you will probably go blind installing these.
 
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