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Originally Posted by Cougra  I speak from experience of trying to make the canopy work for three long years! I strongly encourage you to start looking around for something else. I ended up building my own canopy just to get rid of that peice of junk, so I can't really recommend any canopies from manufacturers. I now use two 55W PC bulbs with home made reflectors on my tank and am a lot happier with the results.
Don't underestimate how much trouble you'll have with salt spray in that set up, especially how much builds up on the plastic lighting cover! Your system is still new so the plastic it hasn't gone opaque yet due to calcium deposits from the salt so you are still getting the maximum ammount of light from it. Even with regular maintenance and vinegar soaks I couldn't get rid of the salt deposits. You can easily replace the bulbs with 20W (standard wattage) bulbs. That's what I did making one actinic and keeping one of the daylights there at first.
Once I changed one of the bulbs to an actinic one I was able to grow coraline in the tank as well as many different types of macro algae, however the lighting isn't ideal for most corals. Having said that, i was able to keep mushroom corals and even a colt coral in the tank with only the two NO bulbs that came with the canopy for over a year. Coralline grew very slowly at first but picked up it's pace as the years went on. I was only able to grow barbie-doll pink coraline, unfortunately the purple and green coraline I introduced never took off.
I even forgot to mention that due to the completely enclosed design of the canopy you wont be able to add a skimmer to the tank with that canopy on unless you either cut out the back right hand side plastic or somehow figure out a way to plumb an inline skimmer into the tank. You can't cut anywhere else because the powerhead is on the left and can NOT be moved, and the built in filter is takes up the whole centre.
I saw the photos in you're introduction thread and had to smile because it reminded me of my tank when I first set it up. I agree with you that the canopy looks really nice and at first I really liked it but once I got a skimmer and more live rock I quickly realised the limitations of it. You haven't had many problems with aquascaping yet because you haven't added many rocks.
The way you have it set up now will work for your current inhabitants but you'll need to make a lot of improvements and changes if you want a nice reef setup. As much as I dislike the canopy system for any saltwater tank, I think it would be nice for a simple freshwater community tank. |
Hmm, well I suppose I'll have to start searching for alternatives then. What type of bulbs would be ideal for a 29G? Would I be able to keep a couple of mushrooms and zo's with my current set up? I would like to avoid having an "ugly" looking canopy, and eliminating the eclipse system would mean finding an alternative filtration system. If you have any reccomendations as far as this goes that would be invaluable to me. I really thought I had myself ready to go for a little while, but it would seem that I'm going to be shaking my wallet upside down at the LFS
I really appreciate all of your help and you taking the time to give such a long and usefull response. I hope that I can turn my tank into a successful reef!