m/h lights thoughts

[bmkindig]

my wife had a thought that stocked me.i'm looking/hoping for a 265gallon tank for xmas and my wife said that we should get a custom made stianed glass hood to hang from the ceiling like what is done with a pool table light.
does anyone have any insight or ideas if this will/can work and how much lighting will this tank need. right now i have mostly softies and a few lsp i'm not really into the sps (maybe in time)
thanks
brad

[wanareef]

Just a wild idea: put pendants under the canopy for the tank and just have regular lights light up the stained glass. For that size tank 4x minimun 250w's 10k or 20k's. This way you won't need actinics. For the pendants - you could diy the HQI's with the HD 500w halogen fixtures. Otherwisw for tubes you won't have the room cause yu'll need reflectors and lights for the stained galss canopy too.

hth :confused:

[bmkindig]

it's just a thought that i want to sink some time into before building but i like the general idea of stained stianed glass

[picassomike]

Depends on how high you are gonna put the bulbs about the water surface.If your gonna put them 8" or more above the surface then I would put 3 400w MH,so the light penetrates to the bottom.I wonder how much heat that stained glass can take?Cause the mh throw off lots of heat,which has been known to crack glass center braces.

Mike