Lighting placement
 

This is interesting as most bulbs will cover the 2X2 either way, the thing to decide is if you can fit all the lights you want in there with that orentation, I know it would be real tight on my tank to try put them that way, which leads to my question.

my tank is 3 foot long and 2 foot wide.. I am thinking of putting the bulbs parralell with the fron of the tank and have the ends on the outsides of the tanks.. so the glass part of the bulbs will be facing each other.. my thinking on this is that I am only covering 18" long by 24" wide with each bulb so I should have the sides of the bulb to the longer dimension... right?

Steve

Lighting placement
 

steve,

I think you get the picture. If you have the bulbs front to back...then you are going to get more of the area lit than if parallel with your sockets on either end. Each end of your tank won't be as brightly lit I guess. But if you mount it perpendicular with the sockets at the front glass, then the whole front of your tank won't be as brightly lit right?

Should we therefore mount it in the center of the 2 x 2 area?

Des

Lighting placement
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Des IMO to the naked eye you won't see a big difference but the only ting to get in mind is when you will place your coral put the more demandind light coral where you know you have more light

IMO the most intense part under the reflector will be a line perpendicular to the bulb where the niple is and shadie place are at both end of the bulb but a biger one the side of the socket

Lighting placement
 

Ok im confused ,so the best way is to have the bulbs running front to back ,
Nowi dont have reflectors i have what Jaysons using that reflective material. So i should have the bulbs facing the other way then.