So here’s how I made my light bars to hang my lights above my aquarium:

Shopping list (this is to make two bars to hang a 48″ lighting fixture)

2 -10′ lengths of 3/4 conduit pipe (get a 3rd because you’ll make mistakes on bending)
2 - sets of “Sunlifts” from sunlight supply (http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_ViewIt…915~tab~2.html) Got mine from SWI much cheaper
4- 1″ hooks
4- Decorative nuts (got mine from a current light fixture set, but I’m sure they sell something like it at HD)
4- 3/4 brackets for attaching to the wall or stand
1- Bag of end caps (1/2″) see picture for type **optional**
Screws for mounting to the wall/stand

Tools-
Drill
3/4 Pipe bender ($40 @ HD) –gonna return mine
Pipe Cutter

To make these light bars I needed them to hang a 14″ light fixture 16″ over a tank. (I chose to hang it slightly closer to the front of the tank)

I measured 18″ to start my first bend. That gives me 2″ extra on each side of my fixture of dead space.

If you’ve never worked with a pipe bender before, you have to line up the little star with your line.

Bend your first 90 degree angle by stepping on the pedal and forcing it up.

I needed my light bar to extend 15-16″ out from the wall.. so I made my next mark 12″ from the top of the perpendicular pipe. Bending with the 3/4 in pipe bender adds about 4″ extra to the finished bend. Thus a 12″ mark becomes 16″ finished product.

Bend your second 90 the same way as the first.

Cut the excess length off the foot of your pipe. I cut 7.5″ off the end for my purposes.

Drill holes straight through the pipe to screw in the hooks

I finished mine off with a decorative nut, but any nut will do.

I went the extra step and capped the pipe for a finished look. This is the bag for these caps…Notice they are 1/2 to fit inside the 3/4 pipe.

This is what the final close up of the hangers look like

My pipes sit on the floor behind my tank because I couldn’t access behind my stand to attach them to the stand (my first choice) so I attached them to the wall

Final Product

Update with the 48″ light fixture I use now

If you’re looking for any information on sumps, saltwater critter ID, or aquarium photography, Marc Levenson’s site www.melevsreef.com is a great resource. He also sells RO/DI units that are second to none. I bought one from him for my reef needs and I couldn’t be happier with it.

You can check it out here:

http://www.melevsreef.com/ro_di.html

I went to my local fish store last week and they had a very healthy looking pair of Mandarin dragonettes for sale. I observed them for a few days and decided to get them. They are the cutest animals, interacting with each other and hopping around the tank. Just got back up to the tank after a long weekend and its so sad.

The male mandarin when I got him in the tank the tail was shredded a bit. I didn’t notice it at the store, so i thought maybe it happened in transport. Well I get home a week later and I notice he’s not bouncing around the tank like the female so I pull up a chair and watch him. After about 20 minutes he gets up and he’s got NO TAIL FIN. Sigh… I think he’s got ich too because his skin looks a little lumpy like pre-stage ich. I hope this little guy makes it. I tested my water and the NO3 is about 20+ its hard to tell..but its weird that I do 32 gal water changes on a 150 every 2 weeks and the Nitrates are still high. I’ve just brought in a larger 45 gal bin to do larger water changes…I’ll keep you posted on if it works.

I just added a double stuffed bottle of Tigger Pods to the rocks while the lights were out, and another double stuffed bottle to the fuge. That’s at least 5,000 pods in the tank now. I also bought 100 live mysid shrimp to start my culture back in my fuge that I lost from the move. They are my favorite things to watch.

Hopefully the male will make it through with enough food and love because I have no hope for him to make it in a QT system with no food source.

I got my order of Reef Nutrition food in this weekend. One huge bottle of Phyto Feast Live, a big bottle of Arcti Pods and those two bottles of Tigger Pods. I squirted some of the arctipods in the tank and everyone (not the mandarins yet) came out to gorge. The anthias especially liked them. They have been spitting out their food alot lately.

What is Creative Soup you ask? It’s my marketing and design company for small business. A little background how it came about…

When I was 18 living in Tampa, FL I started my own company doing graphic designs and logos for companies. The business evolved over the course of my undergraduate degree and my MBA into a full service marketing company. I graduated through an interesting chain of events at the age of 21 with my Master’s in Business Administration and almost four years of business ownership under my belt.

At this point, I decided to leave everything I had built in Tampa for the sunny shores of San Diego, California. I felt that since most of my skills in design and management were self taught, I’d take this opportunity to submit to someone with more experience and be mentored in a larger company. I eventually accepted a position as Marketing Manager at InfoSonics Corp. (NASDAQ: IFON). I was a one-woman marketing department. Concept, design, roll-out, evaluation all under my task list. Ironically I started working for someone else to learn how things are done in the big bad world, and I end up running the show single handed again.

After almost two years of the typical 50+ hour work weeks, I decided that while I was afforded with great opportunities and challenges in a large company, I really missed interacting with the “little guys”. I worked on projects saving the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, and no one really batted an eye. I missed getting in the trenches with the small business owner and creating something for them that they could have only dreamed of.

I started working for myself again in June of 2008 and I haven’t been happier with any decision I’ve made in my entire life. Giving up the steady upper-management paycheck was terrifying, but my quality of life has improved so much.

My advice to anyone unsure about what career path to chose is this: Find something that makes you happy, and figure out a way to charge money for it.