my custom hex hood

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Tostada

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Jun 20, 2006
Messages
267
Location
dayton, oh
My 30 gal. hex came with a pretty inadequate hood. It was just a single 15" (14W) bulb and had no reflector. The only way I could imagine getting a reasonable amount of light in there was a custom design with two 15" bulbs and one 18" bulb.

I went to Home Depot and found a 3-bulb GE ballast which is rated for 3 x 32W T8 bulbs. Obviously anything with lower wattage should work fine (kinda like sticking a 60W incandescant in a socket that works fine with a 100W), but the "lighting experts" at Home Depot kept telling me it wouldn't. I asked on the forums here, though, and mr funktastic assured me it would be fine.

So I came up with a design and my dad built it for me, then I wired it up and much to my surprise it actually worked. I put two 12" blue cold cathode lights in there between the fluorescents as moonlights. The cold cathodes are supposed to be 12V, but I have them on a 9V adapter so they aren't quite as bright. The wiring is pretty simple. There's a main power cord that goes to an outlet timer for the main lights, then the 9V adapter running to the moonlights which are always on. There's a glass mirror behind the bulbs. We attached the cold cathodes directly to the mirror by epoxying velcro to the mirror and epoxying the other side of the velcro to the cold cathodes, so it shouldn't be too hard to replace them.

I took the old hood, and it fit perfectly on a 5.5 gal. tank (pretty cool since all the 5.5 gal. hoods I've seen are really flimsy incandescant hoods). I also put three 2V blue LEDs in that hood as moonlights, and hooked up a 6V adapter to that hood. The first pic is the original hood.

08-29-06_1359_old_hood_5_5_gal.jpg


08-26-06_1346_aquarium.jpg


08-29-06_1352_hood.jpg


08-29-06_1353_hood_open.jpg


08-29-06_1354_hood_floor.jpg


08-29-06_1355_hood_floor_close.jpg
 
three 14w flour. bulbs? thats kinda bright isnt it, kinda like for your fish

"MY EYES ARE BURNING, SHUT IT OFF, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SHUT OFF THE LIGHTS!"

kidding... i think your fine
 
That is the best looking custom hex hood that I've ever seen. It's still kind of small and doesn't cover the whole tank, which is a cool idea. You've probably even got enough light (43W) to grow some low light plants (java fern, anubias, etc).

And I had never thought of using cold cathodes for moonlighting. I guess because I'd have to wire up an ac/dc adapter in there, but definitely a neat idea.
 
I think Anarchis looks wonderfull in hex tanks. Aparently, Tostada does too.
 
hc8719:

It's only 1.5 WPG, but I doubt I'd want any more light than that. It seems odd that my 5.5 gal. is now up to 2.5 WPG but doesn't seem any brighter (maybe that's because it doesn't have a reflector). It does make me wonder how fish can handle the planted tank setups that are pushing 3+ WPG.


JRagg:

Thanks! That was actually as big as I could make the hood without having to make a custom lid, too. I could've made it a little deeper, but then it would be asymetrical. That's originally what I was going to do and have the moonlights in the back section, but I realized it wouldn't be a problem just squeezing them between the main lights.


Alshain:

Yeah, I really like the Anacharis. But really, there's not much else that will get tall enough to look good in a hex, at least not many things that will do well with 1.5 WPG and no CO2.
 
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