Looking for good 48" T5 lighting....

[dapellegrini]

Hello Everyone,

I have been looking at the NOVA Extreme 48" and am wondering if anyone else had had any experience with this product.

SOME BACKSTORY:

I recently purchased an Odyssea 48" T5 hood from aquatraders.com. I was suckered in by the price or $100. At the same time I purchased some better AquaMedic Lights (from another vendor) to replace the free-be's they send with the hood.

Well, to my horror, I have discovered that the Odyssea hood will only accept 43" lights (only built and sold by Odyssea), where it seems that they standard 48" T5 bulbs are around 45". So my nice new lights don't fit. Add this to the fact that everything about this hood is cheap, and here I am out for a replacement hood.

I guess it might be helpful to expound on the things that I do and don't like about the Odyssea hood.

PROS:
- Really like the moon lights even though they do not necessarly do anything for a freshwater aquarium.
- I also really like the 3 independant on-off switches

CONS:
- Poor build quality all around
- Loud Fan
- Reflector and lights are not anchored to the body of the fixture, instead just slides around in there
- fans make the fixture vibrate, which makes all the loose ends in there rattle around
- NON STANDARD bulb sizes. You have to buy their bulbs
- Acrylic cover is poorly cut, has sharp edges
- The mounting legs are very cheap plastic, were difficult to install and feel like they could be easily broken
- When I had to unscrew one side of the hood to unplug the fans (the rattling became unbearable), I found that different screws were used, so that don't fit, and the holes where mostly stripped. If I had to open this thing up more than a few times, I think it would not go back together.


I am having a pretty hard time finding a T5 hood that will work for me beyond the NOVA or the ODYSSEA. I have a 72g bow-front, with no canopy. So the fixture can't be much wider than 8", and a retro-kit is out of the question at this point. I am leary of the custom built one's on e-bay.

Thanks!

Dan

 

[MSU Fan]

sorry to hear that dapellegrini, I purchased the Odyssea 48" CF fixture with Lunar lights and am very pleased with it. Mine also vibrates from the fans, but apparently not as bad as some I have read about, and it does get warm. But it does not seem cheaply built, but worth the price I paid. The lunar lights aren't very good (needs about twice as many lights), but is fine.

 

[dapellegrini]

MSU Fan - Perhaps the CF hood comes with standard CF bulbs? The T5 hood unfortunately do not.

They packed mine with 4x 12k lights, and I was planning on swapping out at least a couple of them with 5k-6.7k lights. Unfortunately they do not sell these kinds of lights.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Yes, the bulbs are standard CF bulbs. They only plug in on one end, so the length doesn't matter. As long as the bulb is matched with the ballast, like 55W, 65W, or 96W, you are fine. They come with Odessea bulbs, but you can use any others, like Coralife, etc. All the same bulbs. I have 3 of the 260W 48" CF fixtures (4 65W bulbs each) and like them alot. the only problem, like mentioned, is a little noisier, but that can be DIY's to quiet it down some.