Okay, so I thought it was time to bring this tread up-to-date.
I've completed work (exept for staining) on my DIY Nano canopy that I will be hanging over the tank so I thought that I would give a quick view of how it went.
Began work by building a basic box. I plan on the unit being sealed so you don't see all the equipment. Since it will be sealed I needed to make sure air-flow around the lighting would be good...thus the fans. One pushes air in and one sucks it out. They are off-set so that the air has to flow around the equipment before just getting sucked out.
Another concern I had was that being a seal unit, I needed to have some quick way to turn off the MH and my choices were a switch or just make it easy to unplug from the fixture. I chose the latter...I used a PC power connection out of an old PC power supply. This allowed for me to just use a PC power cord for the MH ballast. It also looks really clean.
Next I needed to prepare the bottom panel and do cut-outs for the various lighting I would have. 1 x 70W MH, 1 x Current T5HO dual bulb fixture and 1 Current Led Lunarlight.
I laminated the bottom panel with white laminate for better reflection and so that splashing didn't look so bad. Here I'm just sizing up the holes for the various lighting.
Here is a pic of our efforts to fit everything how we wanted it. You can see the two holes drilled for the Lunar lights. The Ballast is raised so air flows all around it.
Here you get a better view of how the lights will be from the bottom. I put trim around the T5HO light because it's recessed, while the MH will go from the bottom up through the panel so no trim was required.
Here's everything in place and bolted down. I strapped the T5 light in as I couldn't figure any other way to hold in in place without screws from the bottom and I didn't want that.
Here's the wiring mess before it was done:
and after it's complete:
From there, I attached the top to the box to get ready for the finishing work.
Trim pieces were added to match it to my stand.
And here it is with the lights on.
Now I have to figure out how to hang this beast. I have a sun-light supply hanging kit but I haven't yet figured out how to attach anything in an attractive way to the canopy. Any suggestions would be great.