Modern ReefKeeping

Many aquarists find the need to build a custom hood for their aquarium. Here are some tips to getting it right the first time.

I found this out when I upgraded my lighting system on my aquarium. The wooden hood that came with my 75 gallon aquarium setup didn’t fit over anything larger than the cheap single-lamp, fluorescent lighting systems that come with affordable aquarium packages.

After mounting the new lighting system, which was much larger than the one I removed, I had no way to fit the original aquarium hood on top of the new system. I basically had no hood over the lights, which in some cases is ok, depending on the situation.

In my case, it didn’t work out too well. I got sick of the intense light reflection off the top glass really quick. My office was like a scientific grow lab, bright light everywhere, without anything to suppress the extra light reflecting off the top of my aquarium. I needed to get a full-coverage hood back on the aquarium somehow to clean up this new-found light pollution.

In order to come up with a hood that fit over my new lighting system, I quickly realized I was going to have to make it myself.

Right away, I found out that were many different things that I needed to consider before I ventured into this project.

Issue #1 – Weight

First off, I didn’t want to add any extra unnecessary weight to my aquarium setup. I have a 75 gallon aquarium in a second floor apartment, so you can probably understand why I want to keep any additional weight to a minimum. I had to make sure I was using thin and light wood materials, but the wood still had to be strong enough to be structurally sound.

Issue #2 – Heat

Lighting generates heat. The more powerful the light, the more heat there is, usually. My new lighting system has fans inside of it to keep it cool, so it’s definitely putting off heat.

To handle this, I needed to design a hood that wouldn’t contain heat. It needs breathing room and ventilation. In my case, I ended up leaving a good chunk of the top open. The hood I built is mostly used to keep light from escaping the sides and the front of the area over top of the aquarium.

Issue #3 – Bulk/Size

By the time I had devised what I really wanted to build, I realized it was going to be bulky. This was because I felt I needed a lot of extra space for my lighting system inside the hood, mainly for heat dissipation reasons – my lights can put off some heat and I want to let them breath. I had to be careful to not make the hood too tall, wide or deep. I didn’t want it hanging way over the sides of the aquarium. I didn’t want to build something that caught my shirt sleeves whenever I walked by.

I had to design everything to give room inside the hood as well as make sure it didn’t become so bulky that it looks unbalanced on top of the aquarium. Plus, this goes back to the weight issue, more bulk is more weight.

Issue #4 – Access

Once the hood is built and mounted on the top of the aquarium, how am I going to access the top opening of the tank and the hardware hanging on the back of the aquarium? I needed to make sure that I could easily gain access to those areas. When the hood is mounted on top of the aquarium, I still need to be able to do the following efficiently:

• Feed the fish – without having to remove the hood
• Access the lighting switches on the lighting unit – even though I have timers, I might need to manually switch the lights from time to time
• Access the hang-on-back protein skimmer, reactor and filter returns during aquarium maintenance
• I wanted to be able to do all the above without removing the aquarium hood. This is where good design comes into play. This is also where each hood will probably be most unique to it’s aquarium, in terms of how accessible it needs to be and how the aquarium is configured.

Issue #5 – Cost

After I had everything planned out, I had to consider material costs. Depending on the features you devise, your needs may vary. I kept wood costs cheap by grabbing some old, unused plywood sheets from my parents garage. After finishing the wood, it all looked pretty good actually. Your budget will probably determine how complex you can get when building your aquarium hood.

Conclusion

Hopefully these pointers will help you get going in the right direction if you are needing to build a custom aquarium hood. If searching around online you will find many different examples of custom aquarium hoods. The best thing you can do though is carefully consider exactly what you need your aquarium hood to do for you, and then build it that way.

Luke Petterson writes about saltwater aquariums and more on his web site at aquarist-refuge.com.