Which positions in the light fixture should come on together?

Hey Project. I am still monitoring the thread over on "that other" website. No replies as of today, but lot's of people looking at it. Soon as I get something from one of the light gurus I'll paste it over here for ya.

You are going to have a crazy bright center of your tank with that setup. Why didn't you go with 36"?Also, why those bulbs? What look are you going for?I think with all those single bulbs you are going to have a hard time matching the left and right. If I were you I would wire it up on it's side like your picture and power the bulbs up and compare them by brightness and color. Then go with some kind of pattern on each side. Ex:Blue #1SunlightBlue #2WhiteBlue #1SunlightBlue #2WhiteIf it was my rig, it would have 8 ATI blue plus, and 8 ATI Aquablue specials.

cool

i went with the 48 inch bulbs cause i already had 8 of them... so, it just made more sence to stick with that... otherwise i'd be buying all new bulbs... plus this is a taller tank, so the more intense middle section will let me keep high light corrals deepenr in the tank...

My last post was a response from a guy in L.A. on your question. I have another response that I am going to post here in a second.

Project, this is another response to your post that I asked over on RC.

A "normal" T5 fixture is much brighter in the middle than at the ends. That effect will be intensified on this set-up. So definitely consider your 'scaping and coral placement with that in mind.

Re: ballasts, unless you want some funky left-side/right-side effects, I recommend treating L and R as a single (imaginary ) unit. Since you have an add number of ballasts, I suggest assigning the "most middle" bulbs (i.e. positions 4 and/or 5 of both columns) to a ballast, and then work out from there. So if the middle gets the "Ballast1" position, then bulb positions 1 and 8 get the "Ballast5" position. Make sense?

Try to intersperse blues, whites and pinks (e.g, the red wave) so you don't get banding. Looks like you have a couple of "whites" and a lot of "blues", but only one "red". If you like the look of the red wave (I have a fiji purple in my mix which I like a lot) and don't already have another bulb similar to that one, I suggest buying another one of those so you can get both the right and left to look similar.

I guess I would have the bulbs in the general vicinity of 3 and 6 come on first, and I would put blues/actinics and reds in there. Maybe whites and/or brighter blues in the middle (4/5), and in the 2 and 7 positions. And actinics in the 1 and 8 positions. for timing, maybe something like 3 and 6 on first, then 1/2 and 7/8, then 4/5.

Make sense? Helpful?

very cool! i'll have to compare that to what i actually ended up with, but it makes sence...

i ended up with a tanning bed tho... hehehehe iphone dosent do it justice... better pictures to come...

holy crap, the center of your tank is gonna be like being 2" from the sun's surface!

nice job. Very clean design.

thank you.. i'm running the standing temp tests out in the shop now, i just put the fixture on the floor, fired up all the bulbs, and now i'm letting it heat up, and making sure that the fans are able to keep it all cool, once i'm happy withthat, and we get back from couch shopping, then hopefully, unless i've forgotten something, we'll mount the lights tonight...

i hope

well... got the fixture sitting on the tank... i'll mount it to the wall tomorrow... pics are in my 210 tank build thread.

just an update, i finally got a couple more bulbs yesterday, so i started playing around a bit this morning...

this is what i've ended up with so far...
from front to back, looking at the middle where they overlap, just for easy counting...
positions:
1-2 Coralife Actinics
3-4 Giesmann Pure Actinic
5-6 Marine-Glo Actinic
7 UV Super Actinic
8 SPS 460
9-10 Power-Glo 18,000K
11-12 UV 454
13 coral wave
14 red wave
15 420 actinic
16 sunwave

1-4 are on a timer together (G1)
5,6,11,2 are on a timer together (G2)
7-10 are on a timer together (G3)
13-16 are on a timer together... (G4)

G1 on at 9am, off at 10 pm
G2 on at 10am, off at 9pm
G3 on at 11am, off at 8pm
G4 on at 12pm, off at 7pm

its getting better, i'm getting more flourescence outta my zoas, i just moved the 18,000k's back this morning, they were in 1-2 but i thought they were kinda causing a washing effect, so i moved them back some...

input? thoughts?

http://www.metinseven.com/images/art_maxwell_color_temperatures.gif

this will give you a good idea of how nature does it

Ahhh ok see now that makes sense. Alrighty so I need to look forward to at least a couple 10,000k bulbs then.

i guess it just depends on what is going in it and how you want it to look. that is a pretty intense light set up. to expensive for me to keep up. those bulbs are suggested to be changed bi anually or anualy. i hope it works out for you.

yea these arent cheap, but i have found a local place that i can get bulbs from for about $20 each, rather than the $25-$35 i had been paying... so, that helps a lil'. also, about half of my bulbs are older, so, i'll be changing bulbs on a staggared schedule, and not the entire fixture all at once... besides, doing it all at once would be a pretty drastic change and all the light sensitive critters might not like that much of a change all at once...

yeah, for sure.