Easy, CHEAP DIY retrofit lighting

[swede]

OK, so I have a 30gal with a standard hood and strip light. I recently decided to heavily plant my tank. My strip light is only a 20 watt that takes 1 T8 20w fluorescent bulb. Not wanting to waste big money buying a new hood/lights. I started checking out the options, and came up with this :

2 lampkits from wal-mart 6.00 each
1 2pk 26w energy smart daylight 6500k cfl (these are VERY small and compact for the wattage)
2 screws

All i did was take the lampkit and screw it to the existing reflector. My strip light gave me just enough space to fit the fixture in, tucking the socket under the existing housing a bit. The lampkit from walmart is meant for turning a bottle into a lamp, so it comes with a piece of rubber that works well to screw the socket to the reflector. just screw in the cfl and then you're pretty much done. just tuck the cords away in the strip light. you could drill a hole if you wish, but i just used electrical tape to hold it in place near the existing cord that goes to the strip light ballast.
There you go.... I just added 52 watts to my planted tank for around 20 bucks! most ballasts i looked at were more money than that. I will say however that if you have a 48 inch surface above your tank, walmart has a shoplight that fits 2 32w bulbs for about 14 bucks. you could easily use 1 or 2 of those. Hope this helps someone on a budget (aren't we all nowadays).






Hope these pics help. I used some aluminum foil to insulate the plastic of the strip (very ghetto i know). You can use mylar for better reflection. All for 20 bucks!

 

[shelbyzman]

great job! I'm all about saving money

 

[Weylin]

I have a similar think for my tanks and the full fixture is not available here..

The CFL's heats up a lot..

 

[swede]

thanks shelbyzman..... i will agree the cfl's throw off more heat than tube's do, but its not enough to change my water temp. If i wanted to, i could always make a cooling system. I can drill holes above the bulbs to help vent, plus i could add CPU fans for computers for pretty cheap. But i still think its a success.

 

[CJB]

Nice job. Should add a lot more light. Does the color look funky though? I used some CFL's in my room and they gave off an awful tan color to everything.

 

[yipp-e]

^^^ it was probably the cfl you bought. when you buy them look on the lower corner of the box, it tells you what colour it is. The ones in the photo above look like "daylight" ones, you can get cool white, dim white etc etc

 

[swede]

made that mistake cuz i didn't pay attention to the kelviin rating for the first set of bulbs. but next time i looked at the rating. anything above 5000k will give you the right color/light for a tank. the only "funky" thing about the light now is the cfl's look way brighter than the 20w tube. not sure why cuz the tube is new and theyre close in color and wattage. makes me wish i had bought anoher cfl and lampkit instead of the tube bulb. live and learn

 

[CJB]

How about a full tank shot with the lights on?

 

[swede]

ask and you shall receive.....

 

[swede]

if i didn't say that the middle of the tank looks dimmer, you wouldn't really notice IMO