Recently I remembered how stupid I can be when I scrapped a 40 watt recessed light fixture from work that I decided to remount in the fashion of a aquarium light for a change of pace lighting DIY project. Everything came out great with the housing I made for the light which was assembled in short order and up and running. It was a small night time looking light I decided I would use for the last few hours at night before I went to bed. It was a non-flourecent single bulb that really looked awesome lighting up just the center of my 220 for the few hours it lasted. In the short time between my acquiring the light and setting it up I never decided to think about the heat that non-flourescents produce, which was stupid, because even the 40 watt produces enough to bust my glass canopy. (It busted my glass canopy.) I was in the room when this happened, and after it blew out, got to watch the glass sink into my aquarium while i near had a blowout of my own thinking the noise was one of my aquarium walls. After realizing I was still seaworthy I picked out the shards from my gravel and acknowledged the error of my spontaneous projects. I cursed myself for not thinking ahead enough to prevent such an easy mistake. Regardless, now I am in a bit of a bind, and as much as I deserve it, i'm still hoping there is a cheap way out. For some reason I can only find the marineland canopies in sets of 3 for my 220. So I will need to re-buy all of my canopies for the one broken pane in the back end of my middle guy. I measured this pane out and it is a quarter inch thick, 22 3/4 in. wide 12 3/4 or so long. I would hate to spend the 70 some dollars for just this one pane. I talked to a glass cutter who said he could get me this piece for around 20 bucks, which is completely do-able if the glass would hold up as it should. My question is this, Is it possible to buy one single canopy this size anywhere? If not, would normal glass from this glass cutter work in the same as the original, or is there a special glass used for aquarium canopies? Also, would it be cheaper to use a clear plexi style piece of plastic to substitute for glass and would that have any negatives that anyone could think of? Any help would be appreciated, I'm sure I'm not the first to break one of these so any of my predecessors lessons would be welcomed.
