DIY Blue LED lighting?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Alright I just gotta ask some questions first.

What do you think you want to put the lights in? I know you don't want a canopy I've seen people use rain gutters and that doesn't look to bad.

Do you want to have all the lights dimmable or just the blue?

How bright do you want them to be? Brighter then mine less bright?

How much is the most you can spend or how much would you like to spend


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I'm not really sure...Aside from rain gutters, what are my options? What I have in mind is something that I can stain so the color would match with my stand and wood trim. I don't know if that's possible though.

Is it hard to make it dimmable? If not, I'd like to do it on both white and blue. If it is, maybe just the white one then.

I just need it to be bright enough that my plants will grow in it. But I guess if it's dimmable, I can go a little brighter since it can be adjusted anyway.

I'm looking to spend maybe something less than a $100? Is that a fair price? A Marineland Single LED light would cost me about $150. So I guess I'm hoping that it won't be as much. But I'm open to suggestions if you have an idea/plan.
 
well i just did a quick model of your tank on my computer and with the aquastyle 3 watt leds i think you could go with 20 white leds with 60 degree optics and 3 blue leds without optics and have plenty of light coverage. with all the stuff you would need (leds, two dimable led drivers, heat sink plaster, optics) it would come out to about 100 bucks before shipping. if you want more info let me know

for heat sinks you can use sections of aluminum "C" channel you can get at home depot/lowes use the stuff that is about 1/8 thick and wide enough for the leds to fit on. only thing with the higher power leds is that the must have a heat sink
 
Well I went on eBay and added up what I thought would be good for you it came to about $120 for 100W of LEDs including the blues. Which is a lot of light defiantly enough for your plants.
Just for a comparison this light will put out somewhere around 7600 lumens of light. The marineland single bright led 48"-64" puts out 800 lumens of light. The double bright at 1800 lumens. And the reef capable at 3340 lumens. So these lights are putting out a lot of light. Maybe too much haha.

If you were to cut back the number of watts lets say 60w of white and the 2 10 w blues you would cut down the price a little and the lumen output would be around 4600. If we did this we could probably keep you under the $100 you want to spend and that includes shipping. by the way I was looking at the marineland site and their lights say that they will last around 17,000 hours. And the specs on the lights I'm going to suggest you get are all at least 50,000 plus hours of running time and since yours will be on dimmers you can probably double that so these lights will last nearly 7+ years and you'll never have to change a bulb.

Once I get back from schoôl I will make a diagram of how to wire these bad boys up. It is very easy and no experience is needed. The tough part is figuring out how we are going to mount them.


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Thanks a lot to both of you! :)

In this case though, I think I will go with Trick's design/plan. Hope you don't take it personally, Rotccapt.

@Trick: When you get the chance, I'd appreciate if you can link me to whatever I need to buy to complete this project so I can start purchasing them.
 
I guess the one with less lumens. I'm considering doing a plant sump so I may not even need something too bright/strong since I'll move my plants out of the tank.
 
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