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I always wonder how you guys can live with using buckets for water changes. I hate carrying buckets filled with water. I use gravity siphon to drain water from my tank directly to the drain outside the car porch, then use the garden hose with patented fishbag-full-o-holes to refill...

T That's really funny. I made a 5mm float glass cover for my 60cm tank once. One day I accidentally kicked it while maintaining the tank, shattering it and injuring my toe in the process. So I've gone acrylic. First went for 3mm acrylic, which bent so much that the lowest part touched the...

This won't work well, because a PC water cooler is designed to cool something thats higher in temp than ambient. It will most likely only drop 1-2'C compared to ambient.

If you're not skilled with electronics, I don't recommend that you change components on the ballasts yourself. These ballasts are pumping out tens of thousands of volts! Better to just change the ballasts altogether if they've failed. Something like these: HF-Essential for TL5/TL-D - Philips

It's sad that their pH readings don't go lower than 6.4 too. My high-tech tank with CO2 injection and ADA Aquasoil goes lower than that. I stopped buying slides. I just use it for the PAR/lux/kelvin meter really.

Thanks Fox. I also found out there's a slow leak in my bubble counter, which is probably why I have to pump more CO2 than expected. Once I pick up another one I'll test again.

Hey fox. I just built my own reactor following your plans. I have an Eheim Pro3 2080 factory rated at 1700lph connected to it. I used an 11" canister (measured from bottom to the top of the cover, minus the "bumps" for inlet/outlet). CO2 is delivered via a cheapo glass in-tank diffuser. The...

Try Amazon - Amazon.co.uk: hydor koralia. I bought a spare impeller from amazon.com US before.

I'm working on a custom spraybar myself made of acrylic. From what I can gather, the total cross sectional area of all the holes combined should be equal to the total cross sectional area of the filter tubing to get similar water current. This is all internal cross section of course. If you want...

I agree that a plug-and-play setup like what foxfish recommended would be the easier way to go.

A very open-ended question! There's so much experimentation with DIY LEDs, which is kinda the fun part. I'd recommend something like 5x 3W LEDs from Cree. Optics/lenses might be needed depending on how high up you want to suspend the unit. You'll need a heatsink or at least an aluminium plate to...

Hi, don't forget that you need to solder the base of the LED to the big round pad on the LED PCB strip in order to dissipate heat. Hard to solder without reflowing so it might be easier just to spread thermal paste instead.

Wait, I just realised that the PM scraper I saw does have a blade but yours doesn't. http://www.ebay.com/itm/PM-Algae-Cleane ... 495wt_1064 Weird.

Hi Mike, why do you need to glue on the razor? Is the supplied blade insufficient? I've been looking to buy this algae scraper as well.

I use a combination of that body scrub glove (cheap as chips at a pharmacy), a light scouring pad that isn't abrasive enough to scratch the glass (good for tank edges) and a blade attached to a chopstick for areas I can't access. No I don't use the same glove to shower or the same chopstick to...

Also, I think ADA's Superjet filters have been tested to show minimal loss of flow when media is loaded and hoses/inlets/outlets are connected, etc. An Eheim classic can suffer up to 50% loss, so my Eheim 2215's rated 600 l/h drops to 300-400 l/h, which is probably about the same as the Superjet...

Looking pretty good mate. Not sure about the mad psychedelic sunset though :-D

Great idea with the PCB strips, it will make things look a lot cleaner. How does the strip dissipate heat? These LEDs produce a lot of heat and its lifetime is proportional to the temp at which it runs at. Might be too late for this, but the original lights are just normal 36W PL-Ls? I'm not at...

You probably wanna ditch the blue LEDs as it won't look good in a planted tank setup. Your red plants won't look red while your green plants will have a bluish hue. I'm not so sure about the angled reflectors, because LEDS are highly directional. Your LEDs might end up being pointed wrongly...

A pair of kitchen scissors works for me too.LOL

What a fantastic DIY! Am wondering if you could share your schematics for the DIY LED dimmers and microcontroller? It would be pretty cool to integrate some digital timers and dimmers into the whole unit.

You'll need it under load, since different loading draws differing amounts of current. And using a multi-meter may not be accurate enough, since the spikes and dips maybe happen on a millisecond timescale. How that affects your drivers and LEDs is hard to predict though. I suppose if the...

I did think about this, but was afraid that the -12V may not be able to sink all that current. Also, using -12V as a reference in this case may not be as stable as using GND, but if you use 6 LEDs or less per series string, I think it should be alright.

Thanks SuperColey! My LED retrofit was more of a copy-someone-elses rather than science. I'd like to DIY my own drivers one day once I have time and determination. I can't hear the fan unless I get to about... 5 inches away from the fan. I chose a 180 ohm resistor which dropped the voltage of...

Here's are some pics from my DIY LED lighting. I used 12 pieces of Cree XR-E 3W LEDs driven by 2 Luxdrive 1000mA buckpucks. The whole thing is powered by a 24V 4A laptop power supply. It all started with a bog standard Dolphin 60cm 2x18W lighting unit. Ripped out all the innards and cut a...

From what I gather reading online, you'll need a DC power supply that is at least equal to the total voltage drop across the LEDs in one series. You can get the voltage drop from the LED's datasheet. Assuming a 3.7V drop across one LED, for a string of 7, you will need a DC power supply with...

Plastic plants with toys like pyramids and scuba diver? :lol: