Natraul light???

[Poet2dagger27689]

If you had say....a 125 gallon long tank that was a reef tank. Could you use slylights that aren't UV potected shine into the tank for the lighting? I mean not the square ones but the ones you can move around that are cylindrical and that use mirrors to aim the light?

[Ping]

Yes, skylights have been used successfully. Supplemented with electric lighting on low light days. I dont know about mirrored light?

[caferacermike]

I read an article somewhere that says not really. The biggest problem being that you cannot truly capture the sunlight. The sun moves all day long and therefore would be difficult to get a nice even light in the tank. You'd have to figure out where the sun sits the longest each day on your house and decide if that was enough. It might help to use one of those round bubble "quick lights" as the sun could be more easily picked up than with a flat piece of glass. I'll try to look around but I know it was in an article about MH and how to pick the right MH for your tank. I think the site was alink from coralreefbazaar but I don't have time to double check this morning.

[R_S_C]

i was looking into this for my next tank in a couple years. I had seen some stuff on fiberoptic hemispheres that sit on your roof and can capture the sunlight all day long and focus it where you want it.

[matt]

There was a long thread on RC about this; I believe the skylights you're talking about are called solar-tubes or something like that. Anyhow, some guy used them and had alot of success with it. As far as UV goes, as long as we still have an ozone layer, you don't need to shield sunlight for UV.

[prof]

Yup, solartubes... They won't provide enough light by themselves but should supplement nicely. I want to use one or two to catch dawn and dusk changes as well as moonlight.

I have never seen them set up in person but I believe there are a couple of threads/installs on reefcentral.