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Hi all,

This being a long weekend, I have some time on my hands and my mind has been turning to tank improvement - particulary a light mounting or canopy of some sort for our 180 gallon tank.

We want to upgrade the lights and will probably just go with some bare shop lights mounted in a housing or hood of some description. I would really like to see what we can do ourselves in the way of housing these lights.

The tank is 6x2x2 feet in 10mm glass on an open pine stand. There are no lids and the lighting we have at the moment have is resting on the end glass and the centre brace and will probably be relocated to another tank once this project is complete. The ceiling above the tank is solid concrete and almost impossible to drill through so supended lights are not an option.

I googled DIY Lights and came up with a few good suggestions but nothing yet that seems exactly right.

So... I am looking for suggestions, links and/or personal achievements with this type of project. Any info will be helpful.

Thanks

GT

Edit: I found this design which I think is kind of nifty.
http://www.rcarchive.com/fish/hood/
If I went with this I would probably just mount the whole shop light unit in the guttering. do you think it would be strong enough for the full lenght of our tank (6 feet) or would it flex too much?
GT

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Hi,
If you are going to DIY it, then the main weight would
be where ever you mount the ballasts for the bulbs. If
you mount the ballast in the center, then the weight might
just be too much and it could sag over time. On the other
hand if you mounted the ballasts elsewhere as in on the
floor or somewhere else and ran the wires to the bulbs
then the weight would be mainly on the ends which are
supported by the rim of the tank and it would work.

If you are going to use the shop light idea, I would switch
to a "Kitchen" or "room" light fixture that has 4 to 6
bulbs in it. I believe a 4 tube fixture is the normal size
and you might have to special order a 6 tube fixture.
All come in the 6 foot lengths and can have some beautiful
reflectors built in. 4 tubes @ 40 watts each, would give
you 160 watts which will put you between 1 and 1 1/2 watts
per gallon. Not a whole lot of wpg for plants. That will
work great for low light plants and a few medium light
plants.

Honestly, you need to give some thought to shifting over
to Compact Fluorescents. Even if you DIY a hood for the
tank, with two 96 watt bulbs you would have 192 watts and
four 96 watt bulbs would give you 384 watts. Divide the
wattage by the capacity of the tank for the watts/gallon.
1 watt to 1.5 watts is considered low light for low light
demand plants.
2-2.5 is considered medium light, and 3+ watts is
considered high light. At the 3+ wpg, you would also want
to install a bottled CO2 injection system.

Frank

-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Thanks for the input Frank

We have started buying the lights, they're cheap atm, but haven't really decided on the final plans or bought any of the hood construction materials yet.

These are the lights we are planning on using for this project http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s250/Gone_Troppo/fluoro_batten.jpg

We couldn't find anywhere locally that has the compacts in a high enough K-rating and due to our laws requiring a licenced electrician to wire up anything that doesn't come with a plug, we are going with the all in one units which only house one bulb & only in 4 foot or smaller lengths.

We figure that we can fit about 6 of these lights across the tank.(6x36w \ 180 gall = 1.2 wpg - still low but better than we have atm)

After another trip to the hardware store, we are thinking that we might build a frame that will rest on the glass from pine to match the stand with a top from exterior grade ply wood hinged along the centre and then use a clear or stained sealant on the exterior.

The light battens would then be screwed to the inside of the ply top cover and the inside of the hood painted with a gloss white paint.

Any further comments or suggestions would be welcome and if anyone is interested we can probably document the construction process with pics once we start the actual building.

GT

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Hi,
Interesting law. We can pretty much do as we want as
far as building things electrical, and the parts/components
are readily available from nearly any large aquarium supply
store such as Big Al's or Drsfostersmith, etc.

Does Adam's Equarium have them available?

Anyway, good luck on the project and the pictures are
always welcomed as someone is sure to want to try to
duplicate or better what you are building.

As a suggestion, try going to the local hardware store
and for your first bulbs purchase bulbs that have DAYLIGHT
or SUN in their name. Don't purchase anything that says
warm or soft or white in the names as those are
specifically for reading and indoor use. The others furnish
a brighter, harsher, light designed to emulate sunlight.
They are the better bulbs for plants and viewing fish.
They are usually around 6700K rating. Another option would
be to go to your LFS and purchase bulbs in the 10,000K
rating. Sometimes, when restricted to low wattage bulbs
you can "cheat" and use a higher K rating bulb and get more
energy through the water column and down to the substrate
where the plants are. That way you might be able to get
away with medium light plants with low light wattages.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Hello everyone,
The hood building project has kind of stalled for the moment, We are still going to build one eventually, that long weekend kind of slipped away from us.
We have finally managed to locate a store that has only recently started stocking a new type of globe that we think we can use.
http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s250/Gone_Troppo/compactfluorescent.jpg
Does anyone think that these would NOT be suitable to use ???

We could certainly fit a lot more of these type of fittings into any hood we are going to build to acheive a higher WPG, and they would be much easier to mount and weigh less than the long tube style fixture that we were looking at earlier, even though we did buy a couple of the long tube fixtures they can be used elsewhere around our home or on the 4 foot tank when we get around to re-sealing it.

To give you an idea of size, I think we could fit about 20 of these compact fittings in the same space as 1 of the long tube style fittings.

We worked out that we could fit 6 of the long tube style fittings(36W each) which would give us a total of 1.2WPG in the hood space, which means that we could potentially fit about 120 of the compact style fittings(15W/75W incandescent equivalent) in the hood, we do realise that 120 compact fittings would be maximum overkill for the lighting and would only be fitting as many as is required to attain approximatly a 3WPG level.

Here is the math we used to calculate the potential WPG that could be acheived in our hood that will eventually be built.
120 fixtures x 15W = 1800W
1800W / 180 gallons = 10 WPG(lighting overkill)

120 fixtures x 75W = 9000W
9000W / 180 gallons = 50 WPG(OH NO aliens are abducting our fish )

For the time being we are going to assume that it is 15W each and the final lighting used would need to be something much more like this,
36 fixtures x 15W = 540W
540W / 180 gallons = 3 WPG(high lighting)
or if it happens to work out that they are calculated at 75W each,
8 fixtures x 75W = 600W
600W / 180 gallons = 3.3 WPG(high lighting)

What we are wondering now is how to calculate the WPG if we were to use these, do they count as 15W or 75W each ???

For now we'll just kick back, relax and await a response.
Thanks.
GT

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

i believe they count as the higher rateing. as advertised they produce the lighting of a 75w bulb but only use 15w. concidering the math used is talking about yesterdays bulbs i would assume you would use its yesterdays rateing comparison. to be safe though i would concider them more like 50w each. as im sure we all know advertisers LOVE to overstate numbers anywhere possable.

I would also like to suggest you use FLAT white paint rather then gloss. I know your mind tells you gloss has more reflection to it because if you shine a light at it you can see it. The problem is gloss itself doesnt reflect its transparent and the reflection is from the white paint itself. flat will reflect alot better without the clear coat getting in the way.

Another option would be mylar. i hear it reflects close to 100% and it cheap. where can you find it? i havent a clue i havent looked for it sorry. just read about it on another site not long ago. google it

about the cieling. IF you really wanted to have a hanging canopy all you would need is a bit for cement and some eye hooks to hang it from. little bit of chain and viola. They can look very nice with plants growing out the top of your tank. Im sure frank has atleast one open top tank with plants lol.

anyway hope this helps a little.

My only input into this is the twirly compact fluourescent bulbs. They're 15w fluorescent, 75w incandescent. I had to ask on that, too... I forget who explained it to me here. Anyway, just passing it on.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

After the discussion we had in chat on the wattage of CF screw-ins, I made a post to verify what I was trying to say, as there was some confusion. Here is a link to the thread. Hope that helps. Feel free to add any discussion to the thread.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Frank: "Personally, I still find that working with the number of watts per gallon still works,
as long as you use the same base for comparison.
That is the equivalent incandescent power.
If the bulb is rated at 75 watts incandescent,
it makes no difference how much energy it saves,
use the higher number. "

See link above for more detailed explinations but this sums up the outcome.

in short...i was right ner ner ner

Hi Sin,
I agree. We should use the same constant as our base line.
Please see my post in this thread:

http://www.fishprofiles.com/files/threads/34027.1.htm?5#

Oh, NO. I don't have any open topped tanks. I got tired
of rescuing the house cats from inside a tank
(like baptizing a cat..nearly impossible without personal
injury), or hearing a rucus and discovering
them terrorizing a fish on the floor.

Frank

-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--