DIY LED Lighting ....Anyone try these....

[one-fish]

Plan on building a led light rail for my 55 gal FOWLR set-up, nothing fancy just the basics. Going to use 3/4 in PVC piping, some tees, threaded adapters and outdoor light fixtures from the local hardware store, wire em up then add bulbs. Has anyone used these ABI 12W Aquarium light. https://www.amazon.com/ABI-Aquarium-Light-10000K-Actinic/dp/B00CXTZN2Q claim to be reef friendly too. Plans are to use three and two blue ones on separate timers pretty easy to do. Any thoughts ??

 

[beaslbob]

I bought two similar for e-bay for refugium/algae turf scrubber. Very red blue light IMHO not suitable for the main display. Also I not sealed and water resistant. (at least mine). I though it would be sealed like cfl spots but that is not the case.

If you going to use IMHO you at least need as sealed water tight case around it.

FWIW and much more expensive we (wife's tank actually) have used a dsuny which included a controller. The tank looks great and the lights are awesome.

 

[one-fish]

Thanks for your info, understand about the water sealed fixtures Electricity and water don't mix very well... and yes expense is an issue ... BTW did look up the dsuny.. might be a bit to much for a FOWLR tank but I am sure they look great. So I guess I'll keep looking around....Hell Black Fridays around the corner.....
Thx Again..

 

[2quills]

I think the biggest concerns I've seen with those are people not happy with the color of leds unless you have the option to tweak color balance.

That being said the 10,000k ones don't look that bad but it's a matter of personal preference I suppose.

 

[lmforbis]

You might look at the black boxes on eBay. They can often be purchased for around $100 each. The only brand of black box lights on eBay I can think of is Mars aqua but there are others. Reef breeders is another company with lower cost leds.
Since you only have fish some of the marine land fixtures may do the job. They are cheaper on Amazon than other places. They will never support corala though if you decide in the future to try a reef.

 

[2quills]

Reef breeders are pretty solid units. They use cree and luxion leds like aqua illuminations and echotech does.

Mars uses epistar chips from Taiwan. Not that epistar is a bad company but for the price those fixtures are sold they are using chips out of the bargain bins. Which means the performance and color of the emitters can very significantly from one fixture to the next. They are at least using high power chips which is more than I can say for Marineland. Which for the life of me can't figure out why they simply just won't make a high power fixture.

The more expensive fixtures of corse you're also paying for the warranty and better product support.

 

[one-fish]

Thanks guys ...Gives me some research to work at, but have the time no fish no inverts still cycling out a new tank..kinda good thing lost power due to storm for couple days. Lights I linked to are said to give a blueish light I am looking toward a whiter light. I like the idea of just changing bulbs out to give the results your looking for.. corals vs no corals just fish. Want to do a DIY project with the lights since I started this whole tank set-up that way. Thx Again....

 

[geridoc]

You might want to look at Reef Radiance - their lights are pretty good, and "reasonably" priced. I'm using 4 of them on my 220, and it is beautiful.

 

[beaslbob]

Actually for a 55g fwlr plain old cheapie 6500k fluorescents will work. Fixtures are around $12 and 2 tubes around $7 or so. So you could get two sets for $40 and produce about 120W. But you wouldn't have the flexibility for future corals.

my .02