125 gal hood diy

[davidandliz]

My husband is making a hood for our 125...
i had a suggestion.. which may be crazy ... but he is going to try it..
anyone have an opinion about this let me know..

it will be a 72 inch long hood but the first 2/3 will be where we will put either t-5's or vho's ( probably (5) 110 watt vho
s - 2 being actinic ....
we have a metal halide pendant light which we will hang above the hood and the last 1/3 of the hood will have a round hole wider then the halide.. and the halide will be hung from the ceiling above that hole.... ( also thinking about putting a piece of plexiglass to close that whole up so reduces evaporation.

question... is it enough light for that 1/3 of the tank that will only have the halide above it.. i believe it is a 175 watt pendant.

so from the front of the tank it will look like a regular hood but on the right side there will be a halide hanging above it

i attached a picture of my idea .. let me know what you think

 

[4n4sd4]

Why would you only put a halide over the one side of the tank? In my opinion your tank lighting and color is going to look way off. Colors will not match, and will really throw off looking at the tank in my opinion.

Just my $.02

 

[davidandliz]

because we already have the halide and the t-5's.. from a previous tank... we are trying to make it work without having to spend too much money.
we have had the halid for over 2 years and have yet to use it.

 

[firecrackerbob]

I did something sort of similar when I built my hood for my 55… I mounted a 250W 10K MH on the right side of the hood then ran VHOs ( 1 10k and 1 actinic) the whole length of the hood.
It looks OK, but not as good as I had hoped. There is a definite gradient of brightness and color from the right of the tank to the left. It's not unbearable for now, but again not quite what I hoped- thinking of changing the MH bulb to 12/14K to correct it a bit.

To answer your questions:
You could do this, but I agree with Andy that your color and brightness gradient is going to look really weird. I would definitely NOT put that piece of plexy glass in if you do as a 175W MH is already a bit on the low side imho, but putting that glass will really cut down on it's brightness and efficiency.

If it were me, I would build one hood covering the whole tank. Mount the MH in the center over the center panel then pack in as many T-5s and VHOs as I could around it. You will still notice some gradients, but it will not be nearly as pronounced as your original idea. Assuming you have 4 T-5s from your 90 at 48 in each here is what I would do:

--------------VHO-------------
-------T5---------
........................ ----------T5------
.......................MH..................
--------T5--------------
......................... ------------T5------
--------------VHO----------------

dots representing open spance and --- bulbs
Might be too tight for it all, but you get the idea. assuming your MH is 10-15K, your run aquablue and 10K t-5s and VHO actinic I would think your colors would look pretty good and should be able to get pretty good growth
Cheers
Eric

 

[davidandliz]

well .. i thought this was a good idea but apparently not... so we are going to buy new vhos for the tank but its going to cost almost 200$ for the lights and we also need to buy 2 ballasts...

i havent been about to find any real cheap .. so it looks like the tank will have to stay empty in the living room.

 

[a1amap]

How many bulbs were you trying to run off each ballast? What K would you like the bulbs?

 

[davidandliz]

well we would need like 4 or 5 72 inch vho's at 160 watts each.

but i thin wewill buy icyys 4 48inch vho's and add maybe one from our tank then added 4 or 5 24 inch lights with 75 watts each and that would probably work out okay.