Sat, 12/17/2005 - 23:28

I made a small cube a while back that was supposed to be a refugium. Well, it was too small for the application, so I decided to use it for quarantine from time to time. Usually it is empty, but lately there is some LR and a few ricordia and other bits of life doing their thing.

I decided to use one of the refugium lightbulbs I recommend over this tank, but didn't have a nice way to keep it suspended. Today, I decided to make a light bracket with some acrylic. :D

Here's the tank, with normal lighting shining in the room since the 280g reef has 1220w of light pounding the ceiling and walls. It looks rather blue in this shot. It needs to be cleaned as some algae is growing on the walls, or maybe I need more snails. It is what it is.

Here you can see the bracket, taken with a flash.

I had a piece of 3/8" acrylic that was 1.75" wide and 24" long. I bent it with a propane torch, heating each side equally for about 1 minute to get it to soften and bend. I actually made two bends, creating a 2" flat spot at the apex where the light hangs from.

The tank's opening is 10.5" wide, so I bent this to fit within those dimensions, and glued a tiny foot near the base of each leg. That way as it slid down within the opening, the feet would act as stoppers to keep it in position.

The apex had a small hole drilled at the center, then I used the table saw to create a notch leading to the hole. That ended up with a keyhole type opening. All I had to do was slide the cord through the notch until it reached the pre-drilled hole, and it was ready to go.

I thought I might have to put a ziptie around the cord to keep it from sliding through, but it stayed perfectly in place. I'll keep an eye on it, in case it needs to be tethered but it really looks like it will work out fine. Plus it is easy to reach in the tank near this bulb, or move the assembly toward the back to get more access.

So if you have a project that needs a solution, think about using acrylic next time. ;)