DIY Light Fixtures for Our Greenhouse Vat

Here is my latest DIY project. I have wanted to redo the lights over the vat for quite some time now, now it has been done. I made them on the same style as the acan tank lights, these fixtures I painted black to see how well they will hold up. So a week of working in my spare time while doing other honey do’s here is some pictures of the end results. The fixtures are made from square aluminum tubing, angle, stainless hardware and hangers.


Assembling one of the fixtures.


Half way through assembling a fixture.


Assembled fixture ready to hang.


With two fixtures hanging.


All fixtures hung.

The next thing on the list is to refinish the top rim of the vat, then redo all the inlets on the vat with gate valves and Loc-Line. Then I will start building our DIY acro tank.

 

Cool project! I'd love to have my own greenhouse coral tanks someday

 

Sweet job and setup.

 

That looks awesome. I think we need photos of the content of the tanks as well.

 

So, how much light is from the sun? Or is it mostly from the t5s? Have you taken PAR meter readings to see what the readings would be from the sun alone?

 

thats neat. im interested in seeing a FTS

 

I will see if I can get some better ones today.

At one time when we did not have the shade cloth on the greenhouse roof on a sunny day mid June at mid day I was registering 1200 on the par meter. I was getting plenty of light but the water was not deep enough to filter it to the part of the spectrum. I end up going with shade cloth and the T5’s for more of the blue part of the spectrum They are currently 14" from the water surface and will eventually end up 5 to 6 " off the water. My current readings today (mostly overcast):
1360 par - outside the greenhouse
110 par - inside the greenhouse with 70% shade cloth with out lights at water surface in vat.
25 par – at bottom of vat without lights
229 par – in vat at water surface with lights
149 par – in vat 1” below water surface
115 par – in vat at bottom

As requested here are some pictures of the vat starting from the left working to the right.

 

those look great..

 

Wow very nice! I love this setup too. 8)

 

WoW. that has to be the neatest setup i have seen yet. do you have a thread for your tank. or is this your tank?