sunny aquarium

[Eric]

Hi -
I am planning where to put tanks in our new house -- lots of fun, but not that easy.
There are a few prime spots for a showy tank in sunny rooms, either direct sun for part of the day, or indirect for all day.
I have avoided sunny locations before now, but I am now wondering if anyone has done this.  How big a problem is it and can I work with it somehow?  This is just for one tank - I have a nice dark basement for some others (did someone say fishroom?)  I could put either a planted tank or cichlid tank in the sunny spot.
What do you think?  Is this worth trying, or not worth the headache?
Eric

[babblefish1960]

Leaving a tank in a sunny spot creates control issues of a proportion not worth pursuing.  First issue is that the tank will overheat in the sunlight. Second issue is that you will be faced with incredible bursts of green water as the sunlight feeds the algae faster than you can shake a stick at it.  Not that shaking a stick at algae ever helped control it, but you see what I am saying.  Another reason to avoid the direct sunlight, most especially in the winter,  is the cold room hot glass situation that is created, you can actually have a panel of glass experience a shear failure simply from the disparity of temperatures inside the glass itself.  I know this from experience, it is a catastrophic failure of the most surprising sort.

Not to frighten you away from the idea, as natural sunlight in an aquarium seems so beautiful, I still play with it, just in small doses.

[KLKelly]

The two small tanks I have upstars are algae nightmares.  One indirect one semidirect.  Started with thread/branch algae and now hair algae.  I'm going to try a black background on three sides and cutting down the light it gets.  I wouldn't do it.

[gupfish]

get some blinds and maybe background, it works for me cept i get spots on the tank and need razor to get them off once in a while.

[Eric]

Ok, that's enough for me, I think I will shelve the plan for now.  Thanks for the info.
Eric