Building a canopy, how deep should it be??

[MikeyBoy]

I am about to build a canopy for my 110.The tank is is 48" wide, 18" front to back and 30" tall.

How think should the canopy be. Or another way of saying it, how far should the lights be off the water. I a probably going to add MH lights so I need to take that into consideration as well.
Right now I just have a 48" Coralife , 4x65 lighting system and I know I need more, esepecially since my tank is so deep.

Picture is attached of how it currently looks.


your thoughts are appreciated.

Mike

[JasonS]

I recently built a canopy for my 65, I had the same style Coralife PC's that I used until I upgraded to MH. When I did it I built the walls of the canopy 12" high but 2" of that slides over the top to cover the trim. I added my MH down the road and just set my pc's on the canopy supports that slide over the top of the tank. I used 1x2's so the lights were about 3-4" off the water and I had a glass cover between lights and water. When I finally mounted my MH it ended up about 7" off the water. I used strips of 1" material between the reflector and the top of the canopy. If I did it again I might have made the canopy 13" or 14" tall to allow for a little more room between the lights and water.

HTH
Jason

[Tim Marvin]

I try to keep the lights as close to the water as possible. My halides are in housing with UV shields but still sit about 5 inches from the water. My thought is, the closer the better. I am running 250w DE/megachromes and 4 t-5 actinics.