funny yet.. I bought one anyways :P

[papagimp]

found a new bulb for my algae scrubber/refugium at home depot today. it made me laugh when I saw it but then.. hey.. this might actually work! :thumbsup:

 

[RDHDDRAGON]

Is that a real bulb? lol

 

[ghellin]

Ok we need more details, how many watts is that. What was the price on it?

 

[papagimp]

$14 at Home Depot
It's a TCP "soft white" (2700k) 68 watt compact fluorescent (300watt equivalent). 4200 lumens, ~10000 hours life, and it's as heavy as it looks lol. I love it, check out this shot, got a very large metal halide reflector wrapping it:

Heres one of it the camera dimmed all the way down:

the clamp light I had kept the refugium in the dark, but this thing lights it up pretty nicely while still serving the ATS purpose. I'm anxious to see the results of this.

 

[ghellin]

Me too i was wanting to do an ats as well that looks really great

 

[papagimp]

I got lucky with mine, just happened to have that refugium sitting around, it made the setup much nicer than what I was planning originally. i think when it comes time to make version 2.0 I'll try making my own from scratch. I'd like the screen to be bigger but do to the room constraints that's what I got. It's just a tad below recommended size. With anyluck the nwb150 will help curb the need for a larger screen.

 

[cody6766]

That thing's a monster. It looks like someone coiled up a T5 bulb and stuck it on a base. I bet it's going to work out well.

 

[ghellin]

I may try to build one almost identical to sit on the top of my sump, does yours return to your fuge.

 

[papagimp]

what I did is drill 3 holes in the bottom and put in some 1/2 inch bulkheads (for looks and so I could screw in some barbed fittings) that reach down to the water level. keeps splashing way down. the hob refugium is the exact width of a 20g long so it's just sitting on top, it's nothing more than a splash guard really.

 

[ghellin]

Sounds awesome I think that would be perfect how tall is it.

 

[papagimp]

not sure on that, didn't measure it, but that's a 15" widescreen on the laptop and it's everybit as tall alltogether it's gotta be at least a foot long.

 

[Lytehouse]

Going industrial...

How much heat is it putting out at that size?

 

[papagimp]

no idea, I'll need to take my multimeter home and check it with the temp probe attachment. It's definatly warm for sure. I'm thinking of adding some cooling fans or something directly above the ATS splash box so it'll cool off the trickling water, which I believe would be rather effective, much more so than aiming a fan across the surface.