Hi guys,
I’ve recently become interested in getting into the aquarium hobby- unfortunately, as I’m sure is the case with many here, I probably already have too many hobbies and really have no business acquiring more. But despite that I went ahead and snagged a cheap 20 gallon tank a few weeks ago and want to start populating it with plants.
The system I’m going to try and is called the Walstad method and relies heavily on plants to keep the system healthy and balanced. My question: would I be able to use the the copious amounts of 5mm LEDS I have accumulated over the years to build an aquarium light? In her book Walstad specifically says she uses Beamsworks and the Fiet GLP24FS (https://www.ebay.com/itm/291863326976?c … N5EYYJ2J4c and https://www.amazon.com/Feit-Electric-19 … 4K12Z?th=1 respectively). Additionally she says she chooses LEDS with a color temperature between 5000k and 7000k, but found that 10,000k is also adequate.
Ideally I would like to spend little to no money and try to utilize the numerous components I have from previous projects. I believe I’m covered in regards to power supplies, controllers, etc. If I could build something with the 5mm LEDS I already have that is even half as efficient as the commercial options linked above I would be ecstatic- of course I may be out of my depth and am willing to just buy the proper equipment but building one myself with the components that are currently just gathering dust would be more fulfilling.
If you’ve read this far, and have any insights or recommendations to share I would greatly appreciate it. Or if the whole endeavor is foolish feel free to say and I’ll just bite the bullet and go the proper route.
Eh, maybe? You could always try a smaller test area/run
You might have better luck posting similar in an aquarium/fish forum as well
I’m guessing you’d need hundreds (thousands? ) of LEDs to ger the amount of light you’re after. Wiring all those could take a long time. If you have tons of time, go for it. If you don’t, you might consider LED strips from Amazon or elsewhere as a quick and cheap alternative.
Something like these could be cut to size.
https://www.amazon.com/JOYLIT-Daylight- … 136&sr=8-3
> TS-Russell:
> Eh, maybe? You could always try a smaller test area/run
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> \You might have better luck posting similar in an aquarium/fish forum as well
Making some test cubes actually could be a great / fun experiment… I’ve got scrap cuts of acrylic lying around somewhere and would be interesting to see results of different colors and amounts, even if the actual growth was minimal. Appreciate the suggestion
> YellowDog:
> I’m guessing you’d need hundreds (thousands? ) of LEDs to ger the amount of light you’re after. Wiring all those could take a long time. If you have tons of time, go for it. If you don’t, you might consider LED strips from Amazon or elsewhere as a quick and cheap alternative.
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> Something like these could be cut to size.
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> https://www.amazon.com/JOYLIT-Daylight- … 136&sr=8-3
You’re probably correct about not being worth the time; especially since they’re a conglomeration of different brands / colors and pretty poorly organized. However, your suggestion about the LED strips unearthed a deep memory that I’ve got half an LED strip stashed somewhere; no clue how strong they are but definitely worth finding them to check. I also have a fair bit of neopixel strips left over from a client project but doubt that it’d be worth it to use them on something like this. Will have to investigate. Thanks for the input