Eclipse 6 curly Q's and Bookworm

I do not know if this qualifies as ghetto but...

I wanted to jam a whole bunch of light into my Eclipse 6 hood. The guy at the LFS said, "you will burn your house down!" Then proceeded to recommend a new tank and hood.

Undeterred and bolstered by strings like:

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/showthread...20&pagenumber=1

I decided to go the curly q route. I like the 18 watts each and coupled with a 13 watt bookworm with an actinc bulb I thought it would be more light than the CSL. A major consideration was that I wanted to keep the stock hood. The whole franken-nano look is not attractive to me and I doubt my wife would go for it. So asthetics were a major concern.

So here it goes:

I took out the standard light and used a metalic chrome paint to line the hood. I did not want to fabricate a reflector.

Then I attached these little rulers to the posts:

I used waterproof conections because the idea of my small children bridging the gap between open electrical connections and a big bucket of water terrifies me. I also used that liquid electrical tape before taping them.

I mounted it all up and

Let it shine

The only problem is that most of the light is concentrated in the middle but man is it bright!

Hope this helps.

 

Carl

Cool!

 

If you're ever in the Daytona area lemme know if you have trades or anything!

*sniff...sniff* another bookworm/curly set up..........I'm so proud!

Can you post pics of the lights ON the tanks?

Here is a link. Not much to see really, just an Eclipse 6 with REALLY bright lights.

http://www.carlandtracey.com/nano-reef/gal...efday3/PB270107

 

Here's one with nothing in the tank

http://www.carlandtracey.com/nano-reef/gal...rthday/PB250068

hows the temperature doing? i have an empty 6g eclipse that i want to retro somehting into too. i would like to be able to use the door on top though. hmmm....

My temps are currently kind of high. When I put in my rio pump without lights it stayed at like 84 and goes up slightly with the lights on.

I live in south florida so we have the A/C on in my home 24/7 and my FW tank stays at 78 so I know this is a RIO PH issue. When my minijet gets in I am thinking that the temp will be somewhere in the 80 degree range in the day.

I can still use the door, it just has a bookworm attached to it.

I absolutely did not want the "massive structure supporting the nano-tank" look. I have seen photos of nanos that take up as much room as a 55 with all the stuff hanging from the ceiling, in the back, underneath, alongside, chemicles, dosers, auto this, and timed that. It looks like a mad scientist project. Before it gets to that I would just move it all to my 29, hook up a wet/dry and be done with it.

I wanted to maintain the clean, mini ocean in a small box, look.

We'll see how that works.

 

Carl

Yeah Carl,

 

I had to put a 40mm fan in my hood....other wise my temp skyrockets....

 

With fan 80, withouth >86

so I know this is a RIO PH issue.  When my minijet gets in

Oh my, yes. I don't have a Rio, but my ZooMed PowerSweep consumes 9.5w to pump 120gph. I just took it out tonight, though, and replaced it with a MiniJet 404 and a 606. The MiniJets use 5w and 6w to move 100gph and 160gph, respectively. About twice as efficient!

 

The more efficient your PHs are, the less heat they put into the water. Also, the MiniJets can be placed half out of the water to dissapate some heat into the air instead of the water.

 

I'm taking my PowerSweep out to the desert for target practice. :pirate:

Good word, Thanks

btw

Who IS that a picture of?

btw

Who IS that a picture of?

My own mug is too ugly, so I found something more aesthetically pleasing.

You could easily add 2 60mm PC fans to the back of the hood. Before I upraded my Eclipse to my 20 gallon it kept the temp right at 80. I just used a dremel and a radio shack 12v AC adapter.

 

I have pictures on my site if you want to see them...

 

http://www.nunzilla.net/nano

I could do this but i would like to avoid cutting holes in the hood. My new powerheads should be here any day, I will see what happens when i put them in. I think my next step would be to get a small fan and put it on the counter pointing at the hood.

how did you attach the lights to the hood?

I guess I wasn't clear on that. I got those rulers and I drilled a hole in one end. I then folded them in half. See the hole that was already in one end? After i folded them in half i could reach through the whole and screw the other end to the post that held the stock lighting. I simply tie wrapped them to the folded over ruler. I did it this waqy to get enough clearance so the bulb would not touch the hood.

Does that make sense?

Hope this helps. (I could take a picture of the mounting if you needed me to)

Carl

What wattage curly Q's did you use and what color spectrum are they?

Thanks

I guess for our purposes they are 19 watts each and 6500K. They are the ones in this thread:

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/showthread...20&pagenumber=1

However, not to take away from jflysmooth, but I absolutely would not recommend having bare wires above a tub of water. Go ahead and spend the extra buck and get waterproof sockets.

 

Carl

I have 2 curlys and 2 13w act 03 on a 5.5 and love it (except for the algae). and i just added 2 10w 50/50 bulbs. but your lights look great.

hmm i think i can kinda understand what you are saying. i went and got one of the bulbs and have it in a pendant over my eclipse 6. i like the color of it, now i just need to retro it into the hood (but i want to keep the stock filter...)

An option against having bare wires is covering your tank! These light get VERY warm (the ballasts will be in the hood with the lights) and an uncovered tank will have considerable evaporation, not to mention the possibility of damaging the custom hood (in my case).

 

I put glass over 85% of mine, cut the evap down, and no chance of a salt creep short.

 

FWIW.....put your tank on a GFCI outlet and get some peace of mind!