5g Hood retro (21 watts)

[god910]

Well I decided to start a 15g nano system consisting of three 5g tanks. I already had the first as a FW growout tank, and decided to make it a salty dog. I wanted to keep the OEM hood for asthetics as this tank will be the one most shown (for now anyway) I was already running an 11w 5100K Eclipse daylight bulb when it was FW, and wanted more light as the light wasn't centered as shown:



So, the first thing I did was to un-*** the hood, just a clip on the wire and a few wire nuts, then I removed the oem "reflector".



At which point I bought a piece of .020 Al and bent it by hand, quick and dirty, to the desired shape.



I next drilled a whole the right size of the socket I had picked up from Lowe's (No, I don't have a HD. God hates me.)




I then wired it up in parallel with the other bulb so if I wanted to try a small photo period I could. I put the reflector in place, screwed in the new socket, put my bulbs in place (Eclipse 5100K 11w, and 10w Coralife 50/50) and plug it in. Worked like a charm, here's the after pics.

Both lights on (Notice the POS damsel in the back by the heater. It killed my Midas Blenny, and was trying to kill my Clown, Gramma, and Dragonet's. The only one it didn't mess with was my 6" Diamond Sleeper Goby BANNED TO THE NANO!!!!)



5100K only: (Notice how much more even the light is alone, now that there's a full length reflector in place.)



50/50 Only:



Another Full light (21w) shot:



I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I'm gonna up the 5100K to at least a 6500K, possibly another 50/50, but I don't want too much blue. There will be coral in the tank though, so maybe they'd be better off?

As always comments are welcome.

[Agu]

How about a pic of the inside of the fixture ?

[Primeval]

ditto

[god910]

Wow, sorry Agu, I never got an email of a reply. I'll grab a pic in the next day or 2.