The Concept
Loving the look of the Euro inspired lighting system but not having the money to drop on a production unit I opted to construct my own
My light contains (2) 250 Watt double ended HQI bulbs driven by a BlueWave VII ballast system. I used mostly off the shelf parts whenever I could to facilitate easy replacement and maintaining cost control



The Shell
 I started with cardboard templates and then after producing a design I hired a local metal fabricator to cut and weld the sheet metal from my templates, I figured it was worth the cost to have someone who did this for a living do the welding



The Additions
To provide as much air movement as I could I used a degree wheel to design the vent hole layout, I then drilled all the holes with a hand drill



The Fan
I cut out the other end of the shell to house a Radio Shack 3" AC muffin fan and facilitate air movement through the housing, I also added the U channels on each side of the bottom opening to work as a slide housing for the 1/4" tempered glass shields. The excess material inside the slides  is to be removed if I decide to add VHO bulbs down the road

  

Powder Coating
I then had the shell powder coated and installed a 1/4" Stainless steel threaded rod through the body of the shell. on the threaded rod were (4)  1/4" eye bolts with a stainless steel nut on each side to hold the eyebolts on place on the threaded rod
I drilled the shell and added grommets to protect the wiring from sheet metal chaffing and added the PFO and fan wiring



The Works
Finishing up I added a modified 96 watt PC light polished mirror reflector and mounted the (2) double ended light sockets and attached all the wiring and installed the 10000K XM bulbs. You can also see the (2) 1/4" tempered glass shields are mounted in place to provide UV shielding and bulb protection from salt spray and tank protection in the event of catastrophic bulb failure