Keeping light off of front glass

[capecoral]

I heard that maybe you can reduce how often you need to clean the glass if you build a hood or lighting setup that keeps the display light from hitting the front glass. Anyone know about this?

[nguyenD]

What type of light setup are you using and how high is it offf the tank. a MH pendant in canopy will be hard to contain off the glass. A t5 setup or pc will be easier to contain, but a canopy shortened so it doesn't reach the glass will help reduce the light hitting glass

[mike_cmu04]

It is going to be very hard to do and you will still have to clean the glass

[kcress]

Any lighting type except LED is fairly hard to do this with. You generally need a shade that cuts off the light - casts a shadow - where the front glass is. The problem with fluorescents is that this is hard to do since each tube has some direct rays to the glass.

It can be done but you need to individually shade each tube. MH is a little easier because you only need to shade the one source.

In either case the higher above the surface the easier it is to shade but the less light that hits the water surface - a trade-off.

[capecoral]

Hmmm... even if you put a reflector around it to guide all the light in?