I woke up yesterday morning and looked over at my reef tank. I just happen to glance under the hood of my Coralife Aqualight Pro lighting fixture and saw that the UV Lens under the Metal Halide bulb had exploded! The glass was still intact sans a few missing pieces, but the pane of glass itself was bloated downward in the center and was cracked in very tiny pieces. It looked like a broken car windshield. You know the look- like a sheet of ice but it is really zillions of tiny cracks in the glass.

I very carefully lifted the hood off the frame of tank and heard a few more “nuggets” of glass plop into the water. I got the fixture out of the way and it was definitely a piece of tempered glass.

What is Tempered Glass? Well through this whole fiasco, I found out. Tempered glass is just ordinary glass that has been baked in an oven. Once it is baked, it gets many times stronger than glass and can take continuous temperatures of 500°F , and is used on everything from coffee tables, to trivets to automobiles. Once glass has been tempered, it cannot be cut or drilled without “exploding”, or breaking into millions of tiny pieces. Note that these tiny pieces are not very sharp and you wouldn’t normally get a cut from them, at least not like regular glass that breaks into those killer shards. Cars use tempered glass plus a layer of glue to hold the tiny pieces together when the windshield breaks. The UV Lens on my Coralife fixture is nothing special. All glass blocks UV rays, whether tempered or not. The tempering is necessary because the glass is an inch from the halide bulb.

Okay, time to find a replacement. I called every major glass shop from the phone book and found that no one does their own tempering. I live in a city of around 75,000 people so maybe it’s too small of a town to support this service. Most glass places I called told me they can order it but it would take a week to a week and a half. That sucks. I’ve done the 3-day aquarium blackout thingy before, but no way was I going without lights for 1-1/2 weeks. How complicated can tempering be? I’ll bet I can build a DIY glass temperer out of an old Black & Decker toaster oven. But alas, I don’t need another challenge right now.

I found a place on the web called One Day Glass. These guys are great. You fill out a form on what you want and what dimensions, and they do it that day and will ship to you overnight. My piece of glass costs $15, plus I went for 2-day Fedex shipping for another $26.

When the glass arrived I tried to insert it into the fixture and it didn’t fit! I fucked up big time on specifying the dimensions, specifically the thickness. Now what. Rather than go through this again, I searched the web for someone who was selling lots of Coralife replacement parts, and stumbled upon Marine and Reef in Arizona. They told me that the glass was not in their catalog, I should give Marine Depot a call. I spoke to someone there and it wasn’t listed on their computer as a part they can order. But he gave me the name of the guy at Coralife that he deals with for parts. So I called this guy and he said “Yea, I’ve got them right here. Would you like me to ship you one?” By all means YES. After I gave him my address, he told me no charge and would ship it to me for free. Now that’s customer service- I even told him that my fixture was three years old and it didn’t matter to him.

So, I’m out 50 bucks for the bogus glass and my aquarium is in the dark until I receive the new piece. I’m kinda pissed at Coralife that the glass broke in the first place. But on the other hand, Coralife showed me the best customer service experience I’ve had in a long time. And in this world of dwindling product support with all the crap from China, decent customer service is very hard to find. Plus the fact that the fixture is made in USA is enough to convince me that my next lighting fixture will definitely be a Coralife.