JBJ Nano Cube Mod Madness!! (lights)

I just got my lights from hellolights.com. The nano ballast is right here. http://store.yahoo.com/lamps-now/14nanretkit.html

I opened it up to find the reflector is EXACTLY 14" long.

I find out that the hood to this thing is freaking really hard to get off. So hard, infact, that i give up and decide to work on the hood with it still attached. (i didn't want to damage the cube that much.)

The circled hinges are thick and glued very tightly.

Sos i finally get the protective plastic off the hood with the hood still on the cube, take out the bulb, and reflector. Here whats the ballast and mess of wires look like underneath. Note the "ground" wire is attached to the plastic hood, go figure.

Heres the ballast ripped out.

And here are the lights. The top one is the 24 watt 50/50 that comes with the cube. the bottom one is the 28 watt 50/50 that came with the kit....

The bulb and the cap from hello lights JUST fit....

I went about cutting and bending the kit reflector and finally got it to fit, when i noticed that the clips riveted to the kit reflector are almost twice as high as the clips that came with the cube. No way it would fit beneath the protective plastic. Thats when i decided it would be easier to flatten out the refelctor that came with the cube.

I'll post more later!

was the ballast hard to rip out?

and post more!

The thing about the ballast is that if you dont break the hood off the tank, you'll probably have to cut the wires from the power cord to get it out. Then reattach them somehow afterfter installing the second light. They're all contected by solderless connectors which i tried to umcrimp, but to no avail. The box itself in in place by 3 screwed and two clips that clip on the switch (which does nothing now).

I wouldnt reccomend doing this on a tank already filled. If you do, its definatly a 2 person job, one to prop open the hood while the other one unscrews and screws. Also a magnetic screwdriver (also what i dont have) is a must.

I have the 1 set of bulbs installed and i called it a night. I'll post pictures in a bit.

My flattened out stock reflector from the cube. I bent the edge up with some pliers so it would fint in the clear protective plastic.

Great work so far, thanks for posting the pics! Can't wait to see the finished project! When you finish adding the lights, are you going to add a fan some how? You might need to because of the add'l 28 watts.

I finished upgrading the lights. They're superbright! I'm going to add a fan to the top eventually, and a watertight baffle in the back, to make it a true sorta wet dry in coming months. I'm also getting an iceprobe and am going to make and attempt to drill the back of this thing.

So heres the connectors i used to reconnect everything! These connectors are cool, they're filled with a white goo, that hadens and makes sure the connections is 100% water proof. The exposed wires are enveloped in it.

And heres the hood with the lights in place!

can we see a tank pics with the lights on?

Heres a tank shot off the only the stock lights on.

And heres a shot with both lights on. I tried to use the same setting on the camera. You can tell the diffrence by how much light is reflected off the wall.

that is a really good job. i would do it but its expensive, and i dont want to mess anything up. plus my heat already stays above 80 w/out heater on.

Yeah i woulnt reccomend it. I was committed though one i put the order through. Plus you guys all peer pressured me!

So i guess i can get corals now, without fear of there no being enough light.

but i have an assortment of corals under my stock lights and they are thriving. Shrooms Zoos polyps. and gsp's and a flower anemone.

i think that it couldnt of been that hard...... plus you know what im thinking about doing.... im thinking of just tottaly ripping out the exsisting lights and putting in 2 csl 32 watters.... baby baby! 64 watts total.....wow! its gonna be the jesus light........

I think it's because i read a lot about how I should "double my lighting" before i put corals in this thing in some other thread and it scared me cause i bought this thing thinking it was good out of the box.

Anyway, its an easy enough upgrade. I was scared of dropping things in the tank the whole time. I did drop a screw in but fished it out immediately, havn't had and bad effects cause of that so far (fingers crossed).

Saltwater - let me know how your upgrade goes.. post pics!

The next step for me is to put the wairing in the back into a prject enclosure and mount it to that back of the system, then it will look real clean. Haven't had any problems with heat so far, but i'm still going to try and buy a iceprobe.

Did you house all teh ballasts underneath the reflector, or they outside the tank?

Is it possible to remove the reflector included with the nano cube and attach say 2x24 in that spot using hte reflectors that come with a retro kit and store the ballasts outside the aquarium somewhere?

Right now I have some gsp in mine, which was sick, and is doing awesome now, plus i added some frogspawn the other day, hasn't been long enough to see how it does underneath the light.

Also, how is the heat buildup within the plastic cover? Does it seem like it would melt the plastic, or even the black hood part?

If you added a fan, would you have it just attached on top of the tank cover, blowing in or out?

Static,

The ballasts are house behind the aquarium atached to the back. I gotta get ti radio shack to get some plastic housing to hold everything in and mount on the back so its nice and clean.

You can put any reflector in so long as there's, i'd say, <= 1.5 inches, theres not that much room height wise in the plastic cover.

I made sue the bulbs aren't touching the plastic. All in all, the plastic cover can take a pretty good pounding of heat. I saw no melting or bubbling of the plastic. I have both lights on a timer for 12 hours, and i inspected the hood real close every 1/2 hour to make sure the heat wasnt too much. The temp in my tank seems to be ok, but i'm still going to add some sort of chiller.

I'll post pics when i get home from work...