So last night, I finally started my modification to my 36" Aqualight Pro. I say "started" because I only finished half the job in the time I expected to complete it all. I will be finishing the rest of it this weekend and providing lots of pics.
Anyways, here's the background on the mod. I have an Oceanic 70G tall tank. Like many new reefers, I got into the hobby by taking the best advice from my local LFS, which included buying whatever they had in stock. That included a 36" 150W MH Aqualight Pro. Because my tank is 24" high, it seems that my current lighting could just never give the coverage that I needed it to, especially at the bottom of the tank. Not to mention, the Coralife PC's Actinic supplementation was pathetic. I've tried different bulbs and it was my last bulb change that pushed me into this modification.
In order to improve PAR, I recently put in a new Ushio 10k bulb, but the lighting it gave me was really too yellow for my liking. See pic...
To fix this I purchased 4 of the 36" sunblaster T5HO strip lights. They come with 6700k bulbs so I also picked up 4 additional bulbs from Hidden Reef. 1 Fiji Purple, 1 AquaBlue+, 2 50000k in the hopes of putting color back into my tank.
Taking apart the fixture is actually very easy. In the end, it was a good thing that I decided to do this mod as I found one of the original connectors in the light for my PC's completely burned up and probably a real fire hazard. Unfortunately, my camera died before I even got my first picture taken, but since I only did half the fixture so far, I will correct that when I take it apart again on Saturday to finish the job. I promise to document each step in case someone else would like to replicate this.
To say the least, here is a picture with just the front PC bay containing two T5HO 39W lights now. Notice that when you look at the fixture, you can see light along the entire reflector versus the back compartment where only the 22" PC bulb exists still.
Right now, I'm using the Fiji Purple and one 50000k bulb in that first compartment. I'm already impressed with the huge difference in lighting.
Let me know what you think. Again I promise to really document the mod so that you can see all the steps that I've taken once the weekend roles around.