Lighting question

[strout]

These are the lights I bought

Hamilton 250w DE HQI ReefStar Pendant System: Premium Aquatics

These lights come with some wire you use to hang your lights to the highth you want above your tank, my question, can I just attache the lights directly to the canopy, my canopy top sits 8 or 9 inches above the top glass cover over the tank so I don't need to really use the wire as long as there isn't a heat issue. Just in case the link dosn't work, the lights are Hamilton 250w DE HQI ReefStar Pendant System with 20K bulbs.

 

[Chris_A]

I don't know this for sure but I would suspect the fixtures would have specific clearances. Probably your best bet would be to shoot an e-mail to Hamilton and see what they say.

Chris

 

[strout]

I did that, but haven't heard back from them at this time. I figured that someone here probley has the same type light setup and would have their lights setup the same way I want to set mine up. The lightes have a bracket on top of them with four holes in the bracket that you could run your screws thru. This bracket sets up about an inch or alittle more above the light, so the light itself wouldn't be touching the canopy.

 

[S.Reef]

i would just mount the fixture to the canopy itself and forget about the hanging kit

 

[Chris_A]

Simply from the possibility of heat issues, I'd try to stand it off a bit more and possibly run a fan to cool the canopy. Might be over kill but personally I don't like the smell of scorched wood... unless it's a camp fire . I know a lot of people say it shouldn't scorch the wood but I've had PC's do it so why wouldn't an HQI fixture?

Anyway this is how my 250 HQI fixture is mounted to wood (it was easier to show the pic's of the unmounted one so you could see how it works):

The bar is 1" Aluminum Square Tubing and to do the cut out's I would just use a drill press and vise... they don't need to be square. Just give yourself at least a sixteenth clearance to get the screw head through. Right now I'm not running a fan but my light is completely open, not enclosed in a canopy. You just have to watch the C-C (center to center) measurment to attach the light to the bar. The ends can always be trimmed if need be.

HTH,
Chris

 

[strout]

Thanks for the advice, I am going to mount them to the canopy, and I may take your idea to use a metal strip, it cant hurt.