New home made LED planted tank light

rostervandross

Active Member
Hey fish friends , wanted to share my new light I put together (with the generous help of mr Stircrayzy!) made from 12 LED and some heatsink from rapidled.com. I basically cut the heatsink and glued it into a square / rectangle, and put 4 cool white, 2 warm white, 2 photo red, 2 royal blue, and 2 true violet into it. I'm really happy with the spectrum it emits and I imagine it should grow plants pretty well.

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My tank is a 24x24x18 45 gallon , and I have three small clown loaches, four kuhli loaches, a rainbow shark, a pudgy catfish of some sort and ten or so neon and glow tetras. I just kind of restocked fish after a couple of my originals jumped from this new tank including my old clown loach, so I got some new ones and clown loaches are great in groups. The three are nice to watch play around together. I'll probably try to stock some more tetras and maybe an algae eater and another fish or two tbd
 

chipmunkofdoom2

Well-Known Member
That looks great. Good job on the build. I like that you made it look presentable... I usually forget to do that on my DIY builds :)

On a side note, what kind of LEDs did you use? You might be able to raise the fixture off the water a few inches to minimize spotlighting. The Nanobox fixtures that are more popular on smaller tanks use no optics, and typically mounting is 6"-12" above the water for that very reason.
 

StirCrayzy

Well-Known Member
Very nice dude! I really like that look!
Good pick on the color spectrum, how long has it been growing?

What is your substrate?
 

DaveK

Well-Known Member
Your tank is off to a good start. Yes, it should grow plants well. Once you get involved with live plants you'll never want to go back to the plastic ones.

To really get good results with plants, you need to use fertilizer. Most of the "famous brand" additives are very expensive and not well balanced. Consider using dry fertilizers and making your own stock solutions. It will cost a lot less and you'll get a lot better growth. Yea, it's really hard for a reef keeper to add nitrates and phosphates to a planted tank (grin).

Be a bit careful with the lighting. What planted tank people consider to be high light tanks, reef people would think the light as far too little. Make sure you get the balance of lighting correct. You will use a lot less than a reef.

You may already be aware of this, but when it comes to "algae eaters" make sure you get a true Siamese Algae Eater or Flying Fox (Crossocheilus siamensis) or an oto cat (Otocinclus species). The fish usually sold in LFSs as an "algae eater" is actually a poor choice because it gets big, doesn't eat much algae, and becomes aggressive as it matures.

I'm a big fan of tetras myself. I especially like rummy nose tetras, and also black phantom tetras. I also like harlequin rasboras and red tail rasboras, as they seem to swim closer to the tank surface than the tetras.
 
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