Quote:
Originally Posted by tatmanfish
I was hoping to get away with a single kessil ap700 given the reviews and videos I've seen. I do have a corner overflow system as well so that eats up a few inches of the depth.
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My bad, I was thinking Kessil pendants when I said you might want 3 of them, not the ap700.
You have a 45" corner to corner distance across the front on what you want to be an sps dominated tank and you want to cover all that with one ap700. It probably can work for you, but I think you'll end up with dim front corners unless you mount it fairly high off the water. Kessil says that the ap700 can cover 48" of width with the fixture 18" off the water. But that will make for lower PAR levels the further out toward the corners you get, which isn't good for an sps tank. But then how many sps corals would be out at the far corners of the tank? Just be aware and keep slightly less light loving corals out there.
It's just an idea, but I'd still recommend 2 smaller fixtures running from the corner at the back of the tank out toward the front of the tank (assuming they fit), especially for an sps tank. You'll get better coverage in the front corners and more overall PAR for sps corals. One other advantage is that if one should fail for some reason, you still have one functioning fixture to keep the tank lit (although dimmer) vs one big fixture that if it should fail, you have no light at all (unless you have some kind of backup sitting on a shelf... which is never a bad idea).