Desperately Seeking Hanging Ideas
- Thread starter Stolireef
- Start date
A bigger version of what I did with three or four arms?
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2114223
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2114223
Actually the VESA plate on the arms work pretty much stock with some projector extension brackets I got on Amazon for $10 per set of 4. I'll post some more photos of what I'm talking about later but they are little brackets that are made to adapt to larger devices like projectors but they happened to be the perfect size to extend out the mounts for the Radions. I'm going to rivet the brackets to the VESA mounts with some stainless rivets to make them nice and tidy. The only modding I needed to make to the included VESA mounts was to slightly embiggen the holes to 3/16". I might use a pipe cutter to cut the excess off the top of the pole mount to make it a little less obtrusive but it looks OK the way it is so I'm not sure.
BTW I chose this mount because it has nice long arms that extend around 20" and the joints only move in the horizontal plane. I wanted a mount that in the case of loosening or failure wouldn't make my Radions swim with the fishes. It was just over $60 on Amazon and it is built like a tank so the little Radions should be little problem to support.
BTW I chose this mount because it has nice long arms that extend around 20" and the joints only move in the horizontal plane. I wanted a mount that in the case of loosening or failure wouldn't make my Radions swim with the fishes. It was just over $60 on Amazon and it is built like a tank so the little Radions should be little problem to support.
Tetra84
New member
Here's mine using bent 2" aluminum from home depot.
Nice! I like the way this looks.. how did you attach it to behind your tank/stand?
Here's a picture of what I just put up yesterday. The hanging arms are the Current USA hanging arms that you could get from somewhere like marinedepot.com. They were holding my old lights, so I wanted to use them again. I took the cable out of the hanging arms and fed the radios hanging kit cable through it. As others have done, I cut some aluminum to attach the two fixtures. I used 1/8" thickness. Looking straight on, the units are flexing down on the ends opposite the hanging points. I may try a thicker aluminum flat. My other option is a horizontal piece spanning the two hanging arms like shown in some of the pictures above. That would let me slide the fixtures in a little. Since my arms were already there, the position of the new lights were set whether I liked it or not. Light spill isn't too bad over the edges, but I'd like to reduce it even more if I could. It's much better than my old two halide fixture.
I'm hoping those fans in the picture are never needed again.
Good luck.
Mark
I'm hoping those fans in the picture are never needed again.
Good luck.
Mark
Thanks! I just bent it using a hammer and the end of an old table. I'll try to take photos but it's basically a backward Z since I have a 3" lip on my stand. You could use an upside down L shape and then screw it on the back of the stand which would be easier for height adjustment. Then I used a 1" angle bracket to support it on the lip/brace of the tank.
I currently have my pair of Radions over my old 75 and still have to finish up riveting together all the VESA extenders. I forgot my dinky little hand riveter wasn't gonna cut it with 3/16 stainless rivets so I have to get a better one to handle them properly. I'm probably being way overkill with the stainless ones but I like the way they look and I'm paranoid about my lights staying dry
That said I'll try to temporarily remove the Rads from my old tank and fire them up over the empty 150DD to see how they look later in the week and post some photos. I'm transferring a bunch of equipment and livestock over from my old 75 so this is going to be a somewhat slow and methodical build so bear with me
That looks really nice. I was in HomeDepot last month staring at the aluminum stock thinking the exact same idea and bought a piece to experiment with that ended up as a reinforcing bar on my current light mount you can see in my photo. In the end I though better of it because my tank was too deep front to back and I wasn't sure if the aluminum would sag with a 20 inch or so span. That and not knowing just where I wanted position the lights to begin with having an oddball 36" square area to light I decided to go with the LCD arm etc.
Thank you. Yeah I have an 18" and was planning on doubling up the aluminum at the bends if it sagged. I ended up not needing it but for a deeper tank, one bar will probably sag.
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