DIY PC lighting steps?
 

How would I go about modifying my Light fixture to house PC lights. I see alot of modded fixtures but no instructions on how.
So what all do I have to do and how?
What type of ballasts and wiring steps do I need to take and how do I set up a reflector?
What materials should I use?
It is only to house 1 or 2 , 21 inch 65 watts buld. So I am not to concerned about heat. Also what alternatives could I do instead?

Step by step instructions would be great. Thanx

1. What size is your tank.
2. What is your existing hood like

Why have you chosen PCs, what are you planning to keep in your tank?

DIY PC light
 

I came across this site and was curious. I need more light on my nano but not sure if it's worth the risk of burning down the house to save a few $$:
http://chrys.addr.com/aquarium/diy.htm

In that link:

That is for a planted tank, the bulbs are all wrong. You can get 20w 50/50 PC bulbs that would work though, from coralife. Not very powerfull, but it depends on what you are trying to keep alive.

The hinged hood is nice though.

I would go with a proper retrofit kit that has a reflector, proper ballast, and sockets. If that fits into your existing hood, you are done. Otherwise you are looking at buying or making a hood to hold the lighting.

That is a bit of a scary way to set up lights.

My fixture is just a standard light that came with the tank, but I want to gut out the existing flourecent tube so I can keep the tank looking clean. No oversized fixture hanging off the top. Its a 33 gallon. I am open to different lights but I have some spare bulbs that I can use for the set up, thats why I was looking to use my PCs.

Is this to keep corals alive, or just for a brighter looking tank?

Gutting the typical strip light does not usually give enough room to upgrade, but it depends.

Post some pictures of your existing hood so we can give some better advise.

what are we starting with here? are you building a whole hood or just modifying an fixture you already have there? if so we need dimentions and stuff befor I can look at the best way to do it.

Steve

I am modifying a Light Fixture. It is about 28" long by 4.5" wide.

How high?

Steve

It is 3.5" high

You should be able to rig up a few T5 lights, those are you best bet they are the smallest tubes and the brightest. Best configuration is individual parabolic reflectors for each tube. You should be able to find some retrofit kits online, places like www.hellolights.com and others.

I recently setup 4 55watt 21" PC's in my Reef tank, and added 2 fans for air movement too cool off the ballasts and just get a little more air around the bulbs...

Easiest thing to do is to go to a lighting store, and ask for a workhorse 5 and 2 straight pin sockets. You can also get 55watt 10k bulbs from lighting stores for around $10 a piece... or if you're in calgary, I could sell you a few of my spares.

You'll then have to go to homedepot or equivalent and buy all the wires, caps, and wall plugs. It can be quite intimidating at first, but its really simple. took me 2 hours from start to finish to have great lights for less than $200.

However, if i choose to do it again, i'd just buy a used coralife system here in town...

We still dont know what you are trying to keep alive with these lights, so it is hard to be specific.

Fishmanty. How did you seal everything up. Is it completely waterproof. Also did you use a grounded power cable?

The power cable for the ballast should be grounded and plugged into a GFCI outlet.

No, its not grounded, and its near 100% waterproof... I have just used electrical tape tightly wrapped

When I get a new canopy made, Im going to shorten the wires, and shrink tube them. Should do the trick to make it sealed. That way the wiring will be permanent as im cutting it to the exact size i need.


(my workhorse 5 only has 2 cords, a negative and positive. No way that I know of to ground it.)

Yikes, that is kind of scary for aquarium purposes, but lots of people use the workhorse ballasts I know.

I checked on the manufacturers site, www.fulham.com

Looking at a few of their wiring diagrams, they indicate

Yeah, I remember reading that now when I was following the diagram 11...

hmm, perhaps I'll figure out a good way to ground that.

For all you electricians out there:
If I was to buy a 3 prong plug, 3wire cord (postive, negative, and ground), and attach the ground to the housing of the ballast... would that actually correctly ground the ballast?

not an electrician but I have zaped my self enuf :mrgreen: but to answer your question if you are putting it in to a plastic housing yes that will ground the ballast properly. thats what the bolt in one of the hols on the ballast is for actualy.

anyways, I would go with the PC's or VHO. I was looking at a T5 set up with two bulbs and was not impressed in the least. only about 1/2 the visual bright ness of a PC/VHO set up of the same size.

from what I have seen for T5's so far they would make great suplmental lighting but I don't see how you could actualy get good results on SPS from them.

Steve

Steve, the T5s you saw, did they have individual parabolic reflectors? I have not seen T5 lighting in person yet. But apparantly they are all about the reflector, because of their small size they are unique, a parabolic reflector is supposed to make them kick butt.

you can make good reflectors for any light, this is why the 150w HQI was so good when it came out.

T5, actually have nothing to do with the reflector (all florescent tubes will have the same types of performance gains in similar reflectors) but rather with how many bulbs you can fit over a tank. this will give the illusion of the tank getting brighter with more bulbs but really the intensity is the same, just more even.

Steve

But with PCs, the tubes are not perfectly round, so you cannot build as good of a reflector to uniformly bounce light back with precision.

With VHOs, I think they all have internal reflectors along the top, so that stops you from bouncing the light back really well with a reflector

With T5s, they are round and no internal reflector (I believe) so you can build a reflector that is matched perfectly to them.

actualy they are round, just depending on the set up you might have to treat it as two tubes in a single reflector. for an example I designed the reflector for my old PC set up and I was with in 5% of the output of a 175 watt MH.

the only one I know of with an internal reflector is URI. Might be more now. the internal reflector actualy allows you to get more light into the tank as you are not waisting light trying to come back through the tube so it is a better set up.


not realy true, you can not pass light effectivly back through the bulb so a T5 will have the exact same limitations as any other floressent tube.

Steve

How many watts of PCs did it take to come within 5% of a 175w MH? What reflector was used on the 175w MH for comparison?