southpaw23 Posted April 17, 2003 Share Posted April 17, 2003 Hi there again.... I've posted this thread over in the lighting forum for a couple of days now and have yet to get any response so i'm gonna try this channel instead....please don't kill me ...... Here's the deal....have been runnin through tonnes of threads and so far i've yet to find a solution for lighting my tank that's 18" in length...most suggestions on bulbs, reflectors, ballast kits look like they're suited for 24" tanks and above. Does anyone have a similar problem or found a solution to this. I just realised that 18" bulbs won't even fit in my current hood....i'm guessing that i'll probably have to DIY a hood but even then...it's gonna be longer than the length of the tank to fit the 18 inch bulbs in.....to top it off....there aren't many bulbs at that length that put out high watts....so what's the solution? Just so you know...i'm very new at this and don't reside in the US so ordering from AHSupply and HelloLights is not an option for me. I guess what i really need to know is if there are even bulbs with enough watt's in them to power the tank and are less than 18 inches in lenth?....makin sense here?....bear with me... Oh and here's the thread with a picture of the bottom of the hood to give you all a better idea of what i'm talkin about....i'm aware that i'll probably have to scrap the hood and custom built one myself but was hoping to keep it and fit the new lighting setup in there...comments? Link to comment
Deimos Posted April 17, 2003 Share Posted April 17, 2003 Southpaw, Scrap the hood. Build one yourself...it'll save you tons of headaches in the end. As far as lighting goes..you've got plenty of option ONCE you decide to build a custom hood/canopy (I prefer suspended canopies..gives you more room to work and heat is less of an issue). Option #1(not great): Do what I did and initially build a hood that was about 22 inches in length...stock it with as many 15w/18" NO fluorescent bulbs as you possibly can and go to town. The downside of this? You can only cram about 45watts of NO lighting in there. Which lets you keep...well..not very much. Option #2(it'll work..but not the best IMO): 13w PC bulbs are small enough to fit into a hood of 18"...cram as many as you can without busting open the hood..lol. I've never done this..as I don't see PC's to be THAT much better than NO's...but this is probably just an opinion that'll be ridiculed by all the PCers on here. lol. Heat starts to become an issue here if you make it a hood and not a canopy so you may also have to intall some computer fans into your custom hood. Option #3(the best and my current setup): I took the canopy that I had for my NO fluorescents...ripped out one of the fixtures and tossed in a 400w 20kK radium MH lamp in.. Now...I wouldn't normally suggest this (I got the fixture and lamp for a STEAL!!) as a lamp of that size tosses out enough heat to boil your reef in about 25 seconds if you have it in an enclosed hood. You can, however, go with a much lower wattage lamp and get plenty of light. Tunze (I believe) makes a 75 watt MH pendant that you can buy now that would be just about perfect for a nano IMO. I'd go out an grab one, leave the top of my tank open..and toss the pendant over the tank....tah-dah!! no more lighting headaches..ever. And the tank will be that much easier to work in with an open top! HTH Link to comment
coralreefengr Posted April 17, 2003 Share Posted April 17, 2003 How about 28W PC. They're just over a foot long, plus the connector, you should be way less than 18" Link to comment
southpaw23 Posted April 18, 2003 Author Share Posted April 18, 2003 Thanx for the advice guys....i'm going to make a trip to the LFS this weekend to see what i can come up with and letcha know. As for the 28w PC's...they sound like a good idea....can probably fit in two or three of em in a custom built hood....but i'll have to find the PC's first....not too easy to find around my part of the woods (live in Malaysia by the way) I'm also considering perhaps a 75-150watt MH......i might modify my hood to fit that in there....haven't worked it all out yet but first thing i need to do is see if i can obtain that MH pendant first.....does anyone have a picture that 75watt MH Tunze that Deimos was talkin about? how big would it be? length, width etc.... Link to comment
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