woah pretty cool I might just go with a nicrew for the 10g but might add a shop light to my 75g to boost plant growth
budget planted tank light?
- Thread starter Kelly_Aquatics
- Start date
Hello; I figure you already know this but will add it anyway. Hoods and lights made for tanks are built so as to keep moisture and splashed water away from the lights guts. If you do a DIY type be sure to have some sort of barrier.
I have an old stainless steel light fixture from the 1970's on a 20 gallon long. Back in the days the light bulbs were fully exposed without any sort of barrier at all. Not good by todays standards but the way it was. I have a pane of glass between the water and that stainless light hood now.
I have posted about my rebuilt and modified lights before and you are the first to show an interest. I am a DIY sort from habit any more but by necessity back in the years gone by. I did not always have the funds to buy nor a handy fish shop around. I am guessing that many on here have money to spend so the name brand lights are what is of interest. Nothing wrong with that at all, but there are less costly ways to get good results.
Good luck.
I also try to DIY when I can I always try to do it myself when I can to save money and because I enjoy the building process here are some lids lights and dividers of mine
S skjl47 , do you pay any mind to the K rating of the lighting that you use, or just mount up whatever you have at your disposal?
I have six, 4' sections of commercial LED display lights that I salvaged from a retail wall display that would mount perfectly inside the lid of my 120. I will probably use if my 4' Nicrews start to malfunction.
Hello; Yes I do look for the K rating. I like the way the lights closer to the 6500K range makes things look. I believe such light is sometimes called "natural". The lights around the 2500K range do not appeal to me as much.
The light on the tank in my picture is a four foot LED shop light at 4000K range. Not my favored range but I put it on top of a 55 gallon tank to just see how it looked and kept it there. As you can see in the picture some of the plants grow very well. In fact I do remove some from time to time as they got too dense. There is a full grown angel fish in that tank.
One thing I have noticed is the Amazon Sword plant in that tank does not grow as well as the others for some reason. May be the LED shop light does not have enough lumens but I doubt that. That is the only problem I have noted.
The other planted tanks have light hood with screw in LED bulbs. I use the "natural" bulbs as close to the 6500K range as I can find. Amazons and other swords grow well under them.
I like the natural look of the tank you featured. From the picture, I can tell that the K rating was lower than optimal but hell, it works. I am running 2, 16W Nicrew lights with a 7000K rating on my 30 ''cube'' with C02, and I am having great results with almost everything I plant. Funny thing though, as with your swords, my valisneria doesn't seem to spread like it has for me in a low tech environment. Everything else though, rotala rotundifolia and staurogyne repens are growing very well....
Aquaneat blue and white LED's on Amazon are great for the price. They are brighter than the plant versions. I have several of the four row models. The only thing that tends to fail on them are the power switches. For me I've only had one fail, but after contacting CLL pet directly through their website they informed me that it was a known issue and the switches had been updated. They sent me a bag full of switches for all of my lights, no questions asked and at no charge to me, even though I only had one bad one. The blue can grow a bit of algae on floating plants that are very close to the light but other than that I've had a good experience with them. The price makes a big difference when your running multiple tanks. I've got fluval 3.0's on my two main planted tanks but the aquaneats get the job done for cheap.
