Ludford
Seedling
Just wanted to share something I recently made with the forum as it might help others in a similar position, I recently started a 25L Iwagumi tank where I wanted to experiment with high tech for as cheap as possible before I tried it on a bigger tank. After seeing that the £20 chinese aquarium lights on ebay were pretty dim. And seeing that proper planted tank lights, even for a nano started at £60 I decided to attempt DIY.
I bought 5 of these 3W LEDs for £4.50 including P&P. They put out 220 lumens each. I got 2 warm white and 3 daylight white. Make sure you get the ones with the heatsink as these get warm!
I then bought a 30cm heatsink to act as the body of the light unit. I paid £12.99 for this.
I used some thermal paste (if you've ever built a computer before you'll have this lying around) on the back of the LED heatsinks and then stuck them onto the heatsink. I then used drops of epoxy to hold them on.
I then soldered everything together in a simple series circuit. (One is wired up a bit weird because I stuck the LED on the wrong way round!)
This is what the unit looks like the right way up.
You'll also need an LED driver to step down the current from the wall socket and convert it to DC. I paid £6.50 for one of these.
Here it is on my tank. It's 1100 Lumens in total and cost me £23.99 buying everything off bay. Which is about the same as one of those equivalent length ebay special chinese units which are much less bright!
My tank has a plexiglass cover on it. I really wouldn't recommend this for a lidless setup, as all the electrics on the bottom are open to condensation. But someone might be able to figure out how to make it waterproof.
I bought 5 of these 3W LEDs for £4.50 including P&P. They put out 220 lumens each. I got 2 warm white and 3 daylight white. Make sure you get the ones with the heatsink as these get warm!
I then bought a 30cm heatsink to act as the body of the light unit. I paid £12.99 for this.
I used some thermal paste (if you've ever built a computer before you'll have this lying around) on the back of the LED heatsinks and then stuck them onto the heatsink. I then used drops of epoxy to hold them on.
I then soldered everything together in a simple series circuit. (One is wired up a bit weird because I stuck the LED on the wrong way round!)
This is what the unit looks like the right way up.
You'll also need an LED driver to step down the current from the wall socket and convert it to DC. I paid £6.50 for one of these.
Here it is on my tank. It's 1100 Lumens in total and cost me £23.99 buying everything off bay. Which is about the same as one of those equivalent length ebay special chinese units which are much less bright!
My tank has a plexiglass cover on it. I really wouldn't recommend this for a lidless setup, as all the electrics on the bottom are open to condensation. But someone might be able to figure out how to make it waterproof.
