Your cheap Hagen type hoods:

Swimfins

Swimfins

This is as good as it gets.
Sep 24, 2004
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Montreal Quebec Canada
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I have one of those cheap Hagen plastic hoods that holds one measly 20 watt bulb. Here's what I did. I went to home depot, I saw a very slim 21 inch long 20 watt fluorescent attatched to its own ballast. (T4) I took my hood and cut out the feeder box and took out the little handle that you you use to open and close the hood. Cutting out the automatic feeder box took some time, however. I glued the light stick to the hood, careful just to glue the back of it so that I can still remove the tube when it comes time to change it. The light comes with a 20 watt cool white, but a 20 watt warm white bulb is available for a few bucks. (better for plants) Then I got a piece of heat resistant clear plastic sheeting cut 6 inches by 24 inches wide. I bent it kind of like a sleeve and glued it on one side and taped it at the bottom to protect the unit from water.

Now I have 40 watts of light over my 25 gallon tank. I have approx. 20g of water in the tank, so my lighting is about 2 watts per gallon now, if the math is right. Anyway, I doubled my lighting for 32 bucks.

I was going to buy a glass top, but then I'd need to change my hang on back filter, and get a submersible thermometer, and add the lighting, and the cost would bave been over 100 dollars. There's a little open square where the feeder box was supposed to be, so I just glued a piece of black vinyl pleather over it. Looks good.
 
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the end product

Step one: remove the place designed to hold an automatic feeder. It will leave a hole that you can cover later.

Step 2: apply some reflective tape inside the front part of the hood, and glue the holders for the T4 fluroscent into place.


step3: pop in your florescent light. I passed the power cord over my hagen endcaps so it comes out of a cutout in back of the hood. I taped it at the back so its high enough over the water. I also lowered my water an inch or so.

step 4: You can use a plexi glass strip or heat resistent plastic to cover the whole thing, which would of course be safest. (The florescent strip comes with a plastic cover.) I'm going to live dangerously and leave it like this.

Just remember if it falls in the water, to unplug before you take it out.

I don't know why hagen didn't design the thing so you could add another light if you want to. Go figger.
 
nice work!!! I like the DIY!!!
 
Thanks:) I just added co2 (2 litre bottle doooooityurself) last night and its bubbling happily into the intake on my ac200, and already I see an improvement in the greeness. Ya never know what ya can do till ya put your little brain to it. I'm not much a do it yurselfer. It also helps being on vacation and having lots of spare time.

Merry Christmas!


PS ryknier how is your BKG coming along?
 
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