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LED strip experiments

Rasbo

Rasbo

Member
Joined
19 Apr 2013
Messages
69
Location
Bromley
Faced with the problem of lighting small Clearseal tanks I decided to try the cheap LED strips stuck to the lid at a ration of double the tank length. These tanks are only 8" deep so light penetration would not be an issue but could the light be enough to grow plants?

With limited substrate I decided to try plants attached to small pieces of wood, anubias, java fern and some floating ambulia.

After a year only the anubias remain but they are growing at their usual rate.

So it seems that the LED strips are a viable proposition (I used the Ultra bright ones) but maybe a ratio of 4:1 length would be better. Anyone else tried these?

The two tanks pictured below, the bigger one with bogwood tinted water.

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not used it yet but i have installed 9 yards approx of the 5050 strip (multi colour ) on my 3 ft tank i will be using this in conjunction with one t5 tube when i set up my tank in a few weeks will report back on results then. not sure if it will do much but liked the idea of blue for the evening to simulate moon light.
 
be interesting to see. I tried a white LED strip in the back of my Trigon 350 and it looked just like moonlight but did not light the bottom much.
 
This is my first post and correct me if I am wrong. :) Actually not used it yet but I got a waterproof LED strips in my kitchen like this http://goo.gl/mB8J8N and it's pretty good so far, and I wanna try this on my tank too!! Cool. :)
 
My mate made some replacement LED strip lights like this to replace his failed T8 lighting unit on his tank (same as yours a ClearSeal tank).

However not a long term success
- Not as bright as T8 tubes, despite supposed LED lumens being greater. Plants all died, and no it wasn't because light was too much.
- Had horrendous fun and games getting the LED strip to stay stuck on the cover. The self adhesive clearly can't cope with warm and damp and continually came unstuck. Contact adhesive was best, but after many months it too came unstuck.
- After a year or two the flexible plastic went yellow and started cracking allowing moisture into the PCB inside and started to corrode.
- Some of the plastic of the white LED's started turning yellow, cracked and individual LED's started going dim. When one started going dim a whole "bank" of 12 ? LED's all started going dim as well.
- The cracked plastic of LED's allowed moisture in and corrosion started occurring.
- Water got in via the so called "water proof" connections and corroded the connections leading to complete failure of power lead. Easily fixed by cutting open, stripping wire, re-soldering and covering in silicone.

In the end, binned and replaced with another T8 lighting unit.
 
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Leona - make sure they are waterproof!

Ian - mine in the much more hostile Trigon have suffered similarly, but then they are cheap! I used superglue to attach to the hood. I see there are different LED's available now with what looks more like cree elements, might give them a go next-time.
 
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