My Ultra Budget-friendly DIY Canopy + LED Build
- Thread starter thatbb6
- Start date
If you can get sufficient lumens in the appropriate areas of the spectrum, I see no reason why these wouldn't be good for a planted tank. The first thing you'd have to do is find out what spectrum these LEDs are emitting. Most LEDs use narrow bands in the blue and near UV to excite fluorescent materials to also emit the less energetic colors of the spectrum. Most manufacturers will have this spectral data available somewhere. The tricky part will be tracking it down.
I highly doubt it but I don't have any experience with planted tank. Each 5050 LED is rated at 0.2 W and 19 lumen according to one of the sources.
I was gonna go with CREE LED from rapid-led.com with proper heat sink and everything. But this setup was built on a budget and heat sinks are expensive. Plus, I don't see Marineland and other low-wattage LED have fan & heat sink.
I'm running some Marineland single brights on my tank. No matter how long they're on, they never become even slightly warm, I couldn't imagine a need for a sink with them.
I have used these 5050 LEDS...to be honest they look good for about a month then they dim a shed load!! also the non waterproof ones you have definately will not cope with being on a fish tank, the evaporating water and salts from the tank will destroy them!
This is what i did with the 5050:
It was 6 foot long, 32cm wide on aluminium for heat dissipation, 3 colours, white, blue, pink all with individual on/off control.
It lasted about 2-3 months then started to dim, and i was using the 5050 waterproof!!! (and they sucked power like a mofo!! i have to use 2 30amp 350w drivers to run them!)
good effort on the canopy, looks nice
I build a 24 led 3w cree array including heat sync for $80!!!
This is what i did with the 5050:
It was 6 foot long, 32cm wide on aluminium for heat dissipation, 3 colours, white, blue, pink all with individual on/off control.
It lasted about 2-3 months then started to dim, and i was using the 5050 waterproof!!! (and they sucked power like a mofo!! i have to use 2 30amp 350w drivers to run them!)
good effort on the canopy, looks nice
I build a 24 led 3w cree array including heat sync for $80!!!
How was the color balance using the white/pink/blue combo? Did the pink give a nice boost in the cooler color range... or did it just look pink?
i did:
2 white, blue, pink, 3 white, pink, blue, 2 white
when it worked the colour was AMAZING!!!
Leds release a very fine spectrum of light, so combining white, blue and pink in the way i have a 2:1:1 ratio of white blue and pink it looked amazing, the reds, oranges and pinks on fish really popped out
did i just read that right? 4d3 those were using 700w!?!?! if so why bother? thats like the watts used by huge T5 and MH combo fixtures...
