Hello again

scubamattv

scubamattv

Member
Hi all,

It's been a few years since I posted.. I recently moved, so I'm moving my old 20 gallon into a new 90 gallon setup. My clownfish Scuba and Diver won't know what to do with all the extra space. Though they'll have to wait a while, the new tank isn't set-up yet. I'll be able to start filling it with water and checking for leaks once I finish setting up the plumbing.. I'm excited to get a bigger reef tank going.

I haven't decided on lights, but was thinking of going with 2 Hydra 52s. I'd like to be able to have a variety of different corals including soft and hard. Does anyone have an opinion on these lights?
 
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DaveK

Well-Known Member
The Hydra 52s are good lights, but I'd say it's asking a lot of two of them to light up a 90 gal tank. It's not so much the total light, but the distribution of the light. You'll tend to end up with dark corners and also bright and dim areas near the surface. This tends to occur, even if you have the lights suspended well above the tank.

LED lighting tends to want to shine straight down, no matter what. To really get great, even light you often need more fixtures than what you would think. Keep in mind though that sometimes you want a darker area and in that case, you may want less lighting.

You could get two Hydra 52s fixtures to start with, and see how you make out. If your happy, then ok. However, I think things would look a lot better with 3 fixtures, or possibly four Hydra 26s.

As usual, both of those options are going to cost more. (grin)

Just to give you an example, I use four Hydra 52 fixtures over my 125 gal reef and I have mostly soft corals, I keep them set to about 80% of the max. My tank is 6 feet long, and a couple inches shorter than a standard 90 gal tank, which is only 4 feet long.
 
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