Light solution

[Ben1982]

I currently have a 125 gallon at my moms house I have been taking care of. She isn't willing to invest tons of money so we are working on a budget. That being said I think something needs to be done with the lighting situation. I'm including a picture of the current setup. Because of it we are running the glass lids which is like to get away from and go to screens due to jump prone fishes. So I was reading the today and saw a post of a fella building a stand from aluminum extrusions and that sparked my imagination. I'm thinking of building either a aluminum hanging bar or a canopy/hood type deal of some sort. Does any one have any suggestions or inspirations they can give on this project?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Aluminum stand will be pricey

 

[Eagle_Steve]

I currently have a 125 gallon at my moms house I have been taking care of. She isn't willing to invest tons of money so we are working on a budget. That being said I think something needs to be done with the lighting situation. I'm including a picture of the current setup. Because of it we are running the glass lids which is like to get away from and go to screens due to jump prone fishes. So I was reading the today and saw a post of a fella building a stand from aluminum extrusions and that sparked my imagination. I'm thinking of building either a aluminum hanging bar or a canopy/hood type deal of some sort. Does any one have any suggestions or inspirations they can give on this project?

Would there be any objection to mounting to the wall? If no, then you could do some shelf brackets intended to hold a cloths rod. You would substitute the cloths rod for a piece of 1" emt conduit. Attach lights to that and have them sit off the tank.

If not able to go to the wall, you can build a light rack that sits on the ends of the tanks and has a bar running across the tanks to hold the lights. Possibilities are endless for that. Wood, conduit, PVC even.

For anything wood or conduit, I would recommend to paint them.

 

[Ben1982]

I had considered using premade shelf brackets but have been thinking they might not extend far enough from the wall. The tank is off set far enough for hang on the back items because it's sumpless unfortunately. Maybe I'm over complicating it and could some how use uneven length cables to the eyelets on the lights to get it more centered on the tank I'll have to do some measurements.

 

[RocketEngineer]

I built a light support from 1X1 extrusion. I used the black kind to match the stand and made sure I hit studs for a firm support. It wasn’t cheap though.