Tostada
Aquarium Advice Freak
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.
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.