Natural Sunlight

Just out of curiosity. Could you use real sunlight to light a tank?

 

Defenitly. Some people use skylights that funnel light down. I saw somewhere were a person used a greenhouse. Corals would love natural light. The only real problems that I have herd of beacause of using sunlight are that you can not control the spectrum so algae blooms could be a problem.

 

I wanted to do this in a greenhouse that I used to have, but the floor was really unlevel. The one thing I noticed is that you'd have to figure out a way to deal with heat as it could get pretty hot in there. Once you figure that out (using mesh or chillers or both, etc.) I think you can do it. A lot of frag growers go this route.

 

I've been considering the idea of opening up my patio door blinds. It lets direct light into the tank durring sunrise. Maybe for an hour tops. I toy with the idea of a nice gradual wakeup for the fishes and corals by using the lower intensity sunrise light to 'wake up' the tank. I would think that it is much less stressfull than 110 watts of actinics just popin on at 8am.

./shrug!

 

You know, most coral farmers and collectors use big tubs outside and use natural sunlight. I think it's pretty neat. You can even supplement some VHO actinics with the natural sunlight to change the spectrum up a bit.

 

I would love to do this. But being that I live in montana we dont get a whole lot of good reef light.

 

Wow... awesome... thanks for the replys

 

I do the same thing. I keep the blinds open at night so in the morining the fish get gradual sunrise, then i turn the lights on when i wake up at 7am and then i feed them at 7:30. they seem pretty happy.

 

Indirect sunlight from a door or window will most definitely cause algae blooms. Not sure you want to keep doing that.

 

Almost all of the greenhouse system need to use that sun shade cloth as coral is almost always farther under water in nature than it would be in or systems. It would stilll work in montana!