grim

what type of switch did you use and how did you wire your lights

hoppycalif

That Perfecto hood had a switch on the back, so I just used it. The wiring is very simple, since the ballasts are in the bulbs. You just connect one white wire and a black wire to each socket, then connect the white wires to the power line white wire, and the black wire to the power line black wire. The power line green wire is the ground, which goes to all metal pieces, from one to another.

grim

now heres the kicker do you think that switch could hold four lights cause in the car world it will over load almost all switches then you got meled plastic everywere lol

hoppycalif

I'm not at all sure what the current rating is for that switch. My guess is that it would handle 10 amps, which is about the lowest amperage a 110 volt switch is made for. That would be about 1000 watts, or 4-250 watt bulbs. Even 4-25 watt bulbs would only draw about one amp, so it is very likely that the switch will work fine.

grim

were did you get your bulbs from cause the biggest k rating i could find was 5500k from walmart lowes and home depot

hoppycalif

GE makes 6500K CFL bulbs, which I got at my local Ace Hardware store. I haven't seen those bulbs anywhere else. I now have 20 watt bulbs in that fixture, with the glass insert in the hood removed, so I get more light down to the water, and much less heat trapped.

grim

thank you i will have to check out ace on monday lol

hoppycalif

Today I started measuring light intensity from this modified fixture, using a PAR meter borrowed from Tom Barr. It is a very revealing test!

First, I wanted to resolve my doubts bout the effectiveness of the simple reflectors I used. To do this I moved the fixture off the tank and put it on a simple stand so I could measure PAR at various locations and distances from the bulbs. The set up is:


I measured PAR at 11 different locations over the tank footprint area, for 8 different distances from the bulbs. Then I removed the reflectors and measured the PAR at the same locations at 2 different distances from the bulbs. I plotted that data for the location right under the center of the fixture and that looks like:


You can see that I get about twice the light intensity with the reflectors as I do without the reflectors. To me this proves that simple, mylar covered reflectors like this can be extremely effective, especially for those of us with a limited budget for lighting.

HockiumGuru

how are the plants holding up under these lights?

I'm considering modifying my light fixture (for 10gal, holds one 14W/11k tube), but I don't want to take the step to do so if live plants won't survive.

hoppycalif

My plants are not doing well. The actual light intensity at the substrate level seems to be too low, but I'm still experimenting to try to figure out if that is the reason. The tank now has glosso and rotalas in it, plus a small crypt.

If I had that bulb over my tank I would try to figure out how to get a mylar covered aluminum reflector in there to try to get more out of the bulb. I suspect that a tubular light like you have may suffer less drop in intensity with depth than I get with the CFL bulbs, so your 14 watts may give more intensity than my two 20 watt bulbs, down at the substrate.