Broken MH fixture glass...AGAIN!!

[Conesus_Kid]

I came in this AM to find, (once again), that one of the MH pendant glass covers had shattered into the tank. :mad2:

No damage to anything. It's the Reef Optix 3 pendant, now discontinued by Sunlight Supply. The last time this happened a few months ago, I ordered three replacement panes of glass from TRS fearing that I would no longer be able to get the part. Now I'm down to one extra!!:facepalm:

The pendants are hanging 7" above the water. Is this too low? WTH is going on here!?!?

The good news is that I think the Phoenix 14K DE bulbs must have built-in UV protection. All three occurrences of this have not resulted in any UV damage to corals/nems.

 

[Flanders]

That seems pretty close to the water to me. I've never had this happen with lamps 12 inches above the water.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

odd

odd

I have my glass hanging about 7" above the water's surface. It's a fan cooled hood. Glass gets splashed DAILY and it's never shattered.

Is this pendant fan cooled, Scott?

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

How did it break? Tiny little beads or big jagged shards?

 

[Conesus_Kid]

I have my glass hanging about 7" above the water's surface. It's a fan cooled hood. Glass gets splashed DAILY and it's never shattered.

Is this pendant fan cooled, Scott?

Nope- no fans.

How did it break? Tiny little beads or big jagged shards?

It's tempered, so tiny beads.

I'm assuming that I would see UV damage pretty quickly if the bulbs weren't UV shielded. There's no telling when this broke. It could have happened anytime from 3:30 PM on Friday to yesterday @ 4:30 PM.

 

[SkiFletch]

A fan might be a good idea Scott. Keep the glass from superheating and making it less suceptible to water splashes.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

fwiw

fwiw

for what it's worth:

because my hood is fan cooled I can run acrylic OR glass splash guards

years ago I had 400W MH pendants with no fans. The glass on those things were like 1/8" thick- heavy muthas. Got splashed constantly but never broke.

I think the solution here is either thicker glass or cooling/venting.

 

[Conesus_Kid]

Looks like I'm going fan shopping...

 

[laxing22]

Do you have a clam? Mine has shot water 5 feet in front of my tank and soaked / scared half to death my yorkie a few times. I have T5's, but the area above him is always wet with tons of dried salt around there.

 

[Conesus_Kid]

Do you have a clam? Mine has shot water 5 feet in front of my tank and soaked / scared half to death my yorkie a few times. I have T5's, but the area above him is always wet with tons of dried salt around there.

No, but I have a Tennetti tang that loves to splash.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

How about long bolts with nuts for spacers or some other mechanism to hang a "splash shield" an inch below the built-in glass? It would stay cool enough to not self desctruct if it got wet...

 

[Conesus_Kid]

How about long bolts with nuts for spacers or some other mechanism to hang a "splash shield" an inch below the built-in glass? It would stay cool enough to not self desctruct if it got wet...

Definitely a possibility. I'd need to MacGyver some sort fastening device. There's not a boatload of headroom under the canopy, so if I do get fans, they'd need to be small.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

maybe it's time you wrote a dissertation on the energy conserving effectiveness of LED lighting and get some grant money to purchase them

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I'll write the dissertation! You'll still need to protect them from splashes though...

I'm sure this is obvious but if you do start throwing fans around the MH lamps make sure it's nice, cool, dry room air they're blowing at the hot bits, not salty wet air, or else you'll have other problems sooner rather than later...