reef lighting half of a tank???

[wakeboard3584]

i currently have a 28 gallon reef. the tank is 19 inches tall and i'm running a 24x4 t5 lights and my soft corals and lps are doing well. i understand that a reef is supposed to have minimum of 3 watts per gallon, which i am just over. What if i were to upgrade to a 75 gallon, which is about the same height, and light only the middle of the tank, where my main liverock formation and all corals would be? i can reflect light from the ends of my ballasts toward the ends of the tank, making the parts of the tank not under the light bright enough for at least viewing. i would think that the light would be just as strong as my current setup over the reef, being it is the same distance away and directly over the reef, but i would like to hear someone else's opinion on this. any input would be appreciated.

 

[mopar9012]

are new lights out of the question for you?
a 75 is more than twice the size of a 28.

 

[wakeboard3584]

new lights are definitely out of the question for now. i would want to expand the reef to the entire tank once i can get better lighting, but until then... question is, will the reef, which will be the same distance from the light as my reef now, get about the same amount of light as mine? i know i wont be able to grow corals on the ends of the tank for now, but that's fine. does only having the reef and main lighting in the center of the tank hurt anything or is there any reason it wouldn't work to keep my corals alive?

 

[wakeboard3584]

unless someone feels generous enough to donate a sufficient setup to light the whole tank evenly hahaha

 

[salt210]

give it a try. the look will probably start to bother you with the lighting being uneven

 

[natclanwy]

It should be fine as long as you keep the corals reletively the same distance from the lights, I had MH ballast go bad and couldn't afford to replace it at the time and kept all of my light demanding corals on the end of my tank with the working MH and everything did fine.