I messed around with different ideas for making the canopy easily accessible. The best solution I could come up with was a few brackets but that would involve screws, a step stool and then still removing the whole front skin of the canopy for access. Where I planned to have an open section, floating style canopy, wasn't panning out either. I'd have to go so low that i would just have a little more than feed access for the most part.
So, I'm scraping that plan altogether. Which sucks, I'll be saving the MH incase I ever get a chance or idea of how to better use them. I've pulled it all down and have started patching the walls. A reef buddy is bringing over an older power module, 10x54w that I'll be buying and using on this tank now. That fixture is 21" wide and will give me the coverage I want. Down the road I'll add some supplemental LED strips, XHO probably, front and back.
I ordered some bulbs to play around with.
4 blue plus ATI
2 True Actinic ATI
2 Tropic 6500k Giesemann
2 Giesemann Aquablue Azure 15000k
I want a whiter spectrum, I feel the Blue+ give off too much of a tint to the water, giving that windex look. If it's too white, I'll be swapping the azure for B+ or P+ lamps.
The order I think will work well front to back once I add LED supp:
XHO/oprhek
b+
true actinic
6500k
azure
b+
b+
azure
6500
true actinic
b+
XHO/orphek
I'll be hanging this light so I can move it up to get access to the tank. That will be my biggest challenge while working in this system and I want to make sure it's as easy as possible. I've ran t5 8x54w on a past 100g. While it isn't my preferred MH, I think it will still do very well for what I want with this tank.