$13 DIY 150W HQI Pendant

[fishface]

13 bux!? oh man what a deal but i'm curious about what the bulb k rating and spectrum is...how does it look over your tank? not the actual fixture but the light it produces...

also, what does that $13 include? is it just for the fixture? is there a ballast at all?

[kwirky]

no ballast, no bulb. just the fixture.

I scared the hell out of my cichlids and briefly held it over half of my 33 gallon cichlid tank to see what it looks like lol. Couldn't take a picture at the same time, but the 13k bulb was quite strong, but judging it's perceptable colour wouldn't have been fair since there was a lot of yellow rock in the cichlid tank bouncing light all over. Shimmer was great

I'm using a geisseman 13000k bulb (bout $100) and a pfo hqi ballast (bout $140). But this saves you about $100 for the fixture, since most pendant fixtures cost about $120+, on TOP of the ballast/bulb you'll have to buy anyways. the $13 is a great price considering the UV shield is included. If you were to retrofit into a canopy, 150/250W HQI bulb clips would run $13-20 anyways, and you'll end up spending about $20 to get the UV glass cut by a glass shop.

It'll be over something like an 18x18x18 cube or the likes. Been planning it for a while now, probably tap it in with my 120 gallon system. It was initially to go over an 18 gallon, 12x18x18 tank, but I upgraded that one to a 120 gallon and now I just use that little "nano" tank for mixing change water in (was a 33 gallon divided in half. I took out the divider, so it's now an ugly 33 long).