DIY T5 lighting

Ballyhoo

Ballyhoo

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Jun 27, 2010
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Fairfield, CA
So I'm starting my first salt tank and decided to make my own lighting. This is what I have so far, I'm pretty sure it will work but I just wanted to double check.

I went to petsmartco and got T5 HO 39W lightbulbs, 4 of them to be exact. I then went and got 2 two bulb T5 fixtures from Home Depot. The fixtures only had 21W ballast ( or smaller I don't exactly remember ) in them. I know that the wattage needs to match, or be very close, for optimum performance so I got T5 high output 39W ballasts that I will be swapping in.
 
I thought about doing that as well, then quickly determined that it was going to be more headache than it was worth.

Going that way, your main differential is going to be in the reflectors. YOur HD light is going to be basically an industrial or commercial light and proabably not have individual reflectors. You aren't going to get full effect lighting with those reflectors and may find you need to replace them, or add an additional fixture.

Also, be very careful if those fixtures aren't rated for damp environments. If you aren't using a tank lid, you run the risk of night time condensation build up on the cool metal over the warm tank. Flick them on in the morning and problems might occur.

So now you are looking at possilby bad reflectors and suspect endcaps for the application. Your light fixture is now basically just the fixture housing, and you can probably build a better one.

Or at least that is what my mind wrapped around when I was thinking of doing the same thing.
 
the tank has a lid and the lights will be placed in a hood. we will line the hood with reflective heat tape or chrome car vinyl ( it is water an heat resistant...still bouncing this idea around though )

If need we can take curved sheets of metal to place on either side of the light to direct the light downwards.
 
/www.4fishtank.com/light fixtures.htm look down to the T5 kits maybe something like this well help you
 
That is very neat!

The lighting we are making is just to get started, we don't intend to make it permanent. It's worth a shot, if it fails the only thing we are really out is about 100$
 
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