spacedcowboy
Community Member
So here's something I'm trying out right now. I'm looking to change my lighting so I can progress from a FOWLR tank to a reef tank and I wanted some flexibility in placement because of the way my rock works (towers of live-rock with open areas between), plus it's a bugger to actually get above the tank (there's not much room to maneuver) so I want something easy to put up, too.
The plan is:
The reason for the grille is of course to reduce the weight of the thing, to make it easier to attach to the ceiling and the use of hooks means that the lights can be placed and moved at will. The grille above is magnetic (I found that not all stainless steels are magnetic)
Another point is that the grille has two sides - so if the mounting pieces have a bit of a standoff, things like the PSU and wiring can all be supported on the top of the grille while the lights hang down. You also don't *have* to use magnets, you could use wire attached directly to the grille with the usual crimps, or hooks.
Anyway, after waiting for everything to turn up, this weekend I got some spare time at last to put it together. From below, the mount will look like:
... which I think looks pretty cool. You can see a couple of the magnetic screws for scale - each of those is about an inch and a half across, with the entire thing measuring ~86" by ~25". You can see the freedom it'll give for mounting the lights wherever I want.
From above (the side closest to the ceiling), it looks like:
The rack will hang from the ceiling - I'm going to attach some more 80/20 to the ceiling joists (my joists go the wrong way, running lengthwise to the tank, and not in useful positions) such that there is a bar of 80/20 going from the front to the back of the tank, attached to two joists, with 6 screws at each attachment point (overkill, but it doesn't exactly cost much).
Then I'll screw in some eyelet hooks to that beam going front to back, and put a carabiner on it. That carabiner will also attach to the eyelet hooks on the lighting rack...
So there'll be about 4-5" of space between the ceiling and the rack, which is plenty to put lighting PSUs and wiring up there.
Next up is to take down all the current lighting paraphernalia and get the 80/20 beams secured firmly to the joists so I can hang this and get it up and running. The current weight of the rig in the pictures is easy to carry with one arm (maybe 30 lbs total) so holding it at 4 points will be perfectly fine. Each of those eyelet screws is rated to several thousand pounds
The plan is:
- To use 80/20 to build a rectangular frame, just a simple rectangle of aluminium ~2' by ~8' .
- To get 3 of these metal (galvanized steel) grilles, 3'x2' each and cut one of them down to fit. I have metal shears that can easily handle that.
- To get some of these to attach to the metal grilles.
- And then to hang the lights (Kessils in my case, although there'll be some AI Sol Blues as well soon) using the standard hanging apparatus for the light onto the magnetically attached hooks.
The reason for the grille is of course to reduce the weight of the thing, to make it easier to attach to the ceiling and the use of hooks means that the lights can be placed and moved at will. The grille above is magnetic (I found that not all stainless steels are magnetic)
Another point is that the grille has two sides - so if the mounting pieces have a bit of a standoff, things like the PSU and wiring can all be supported on the top of the grille while the lights hang down. You also don't *have* to use magnets, you could use wire attached directly to the grille with the usual crimps, or hooks.
Anyway, after waiting for everything to turn up, this weekend I got some spare time at last to put it together. From below, the mount will look like:
... which I think looks pretty cool. You can see a couple of the magnetic screws for scale - each of those is about an inch and a half across, with the entire thing measuring ~86" by ~25". You can see the freedom it'll give for mounting the lights wherever I want.
From above (the side closest to the ceiling), it looks like:
The rack will hang from the ceiling - I'm going to attach some more 80/20 to the ceiling joists (my joists go the wrong way, running lengthwise to the tank, and not in useful positions) such that there is a bar of 80/20 going from the front to the back of the tank, attached to two joists, with 6 screws at each attachment point (overkill, but it doesn't exactly cost much).
Then I'll screw in some eyelet hooks to that beam going front to back, and put a carabiner on it. That carabiner will also attach to the eyelet hooks on the lighting rack...
So there'll be about 4-5" of space between the ceiling and the rack, which is plenty to put lighting PSUs and wiring up there.
Next up is to take down all the current lighting paraphernalia and get the 80/20 beams secured firmly to the joists so I can hang this and get it up and running. The current weight of the rig in the pictures is easy to carry with one arm (maybe 30 lbs total) so holding it at 4 points will be perfectly fine. Each of those eyelet screws is rated to several thousand pounds
