my really diy led's under 25 dollars with tax...

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dalbright82

New member
This tank was my first voyage into saltwater. As you may have seen before i picked up a 14g acrylic cube from gus off the forum sans lights. When i went to the store to pick up a cfl, I felt that they just didn't seem safe enough from water splashing up, corrosion and so forth. Not wanting to burn down my apt, i thought i could do better. LED's looked cool...especially the blue ones...but who could afford those fancy aquarium and cree led's? Not this guy for now...someday maybe.

After spending far too long at Menards i found some lights that fit the bill. Under-cabinet/over sink LED pods, safe for use near water. 3 pods of 25 led's a piece, and you could expand it to 6 if you'd like. But wait, they were on clearance too! 12.99 plus tax.

Now on to walmart for some blue lights to give it that cool night glow that everyone's tanks look so great with on the forum... Blue led outdoor rope lighting fit the bill. 9.99 plus tax

My initial thought was what the heck...see what happens. I was picking up an anemone from fishbeard on the forum a few hours ago and he said it could be an interesting experiment and to keep people updated on if it worked out ok. I don't think it'd be ideal for a large tank, but might be useful for those like me with a small tank that the lights can penetrate adequately. My list of things i haven't killed yet includes: 2 clowns, frogspawn, zoo's here and there coming off other frags, one little finger leather (which doubled in size in a week) candy canes (1 of the two is already splitting), some purple thing which i can't remember the name of that reminds me of a floor mat with the rubber nubs sticking up, and my most recent addition the rbta which i finished acclimating and attached at the top about an hour ago and is already open and with bubbles on the tips and looks happy (we'll see!) and is now just waiting on my clowns. Since the lighting was working for the other's he decided i could try it out.

I'm sure the other led's are far superior, and these don't have quite as good of a spectrum i assume and no info was listed for them, but i'm hoping these fall into the good enough and quantity over quality category. I'll keep you guys updated if my experiment fails miserably or if it could be a nice budget option and also energy efficient! I can put a pic up of the lights if anyone is interested.

-Dan
 
Good luck, Dan! Keep us posted. It will be interesting to see what these can do in a shallow tank.
 
I'm looking forward to finding out just how well this setup works out. It's a risk, but it could be a very inexpensive success in proving you don't need to spend a ton of money on fancy name brand LEDs. Would be interesting to see what kind of numbers you get on a par meter, I have just one of these led pucks under my stand just to see under there and I know how bright that one is, can't imagine 3 of them on a nano tank!
 
I'd like to see them for sure! And man, if these work, holy cow! It'll blow these LED companies out of the water!!
 
Unfortunately I can assure you that the LED system you are putting together will not support any photosynthetic anemones, LPS, or SPS. You MAY be able to support the life of some soft corals, but they will likely brown out.

Generally when it comes to coral like Xenia, star polyps, and mushroom, which are the LEAST light demanding of the photosynthetic corals, you need ~6+ watts of LED light to properly support their Zooxanthella and keep them from browning out.

I love the ingenuity, but experimenting with the life of captive creatures really isn't the right way to go.
 
From what I remember, those led pucks are each running about 11w. I doubt the rope light is doing anymore than adding colored light to the tank, but I think on such a small footprint the 3 pucks should put out enough light to keep his corals alive. Im not saying this is going to put Apollo and AI out of business, but for a budget build could be good enough. We just need to see numbers to prove one way or the other.
 
I guess only time will tell. Do they have a demo of these up at Menards or something? I need to go to the hardware store anyway :)
 
well my plan isn't to kill any of these little guys...but i was going on the if these do ok then i'll try some others plan... The corals i have in there seem to be enjoying themselves and growing. To be honest i can't tell you if they were browned out originally since i was no expert when i bought them, but they're more colorful now than they were initially which was a good enough sign to me. I'm aware that it's not the normal setup and i don't know how much power is getting to them, but if i could afford the meter then i would have just bought the nicer lights.

I had the blue led's in there since i always thought they looked the coolest. The corals open up nicely when they're on as well, but again not scientific proof just anecdotal evidence.

Coming here as a newbie to saltwater tanks i may be out of my place in saying this, but i often feel like things sometimes get to be over-complicated and that can be the fun part, however it can also take the fun out of it. I'm sure the first person that switched to cree led's killed a few corals in his day, and same goes for the first person to try out t5's.
 
dalbright82 said:
Coming here as a newbie to saltwater tanks i may be out of my place in saying this, but i often feel like things sometimes get to be over-complicated and that can be the fun part, however it can also take the fun out of it. I'm sure the first person that switched to cree led's killed a few corals in his day, and same goes for the first person to try out t5's.
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+1
 
dalbright82 said:
Coming here as a newbie to saltwater tanks i may be out of my place in saying this, but i often feel like things sometimes get to be over-complicated and that can be the fun part, however it can also take the fun out of it. I'm sure the first person that switched to cree led's killed a few corals in his day, and same goes for the first person to try out t5's.
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Well put, part of the hobby is learning for yourself, and that is the fun of it for a lot of people. You know your tank better than any of us do. If you feel good with what you have going on, don't question it just because someone else does. There are people that do weekly water changes, oversized protein skimmers, dose every chemical they can afford, and have success, then there are those that haven't done water changes in weeks, undersized or no skimmers, and don't dose anything besides top off water and their tanks are doing just as well! It's all about what works best for you. Either way, we need to get a par meter in your tank and see whats going on in there...
 
dalbright82 said:
Coming here as a newbie to saltwater tanks i may be out of my place in saying this, but i often feel like things sometimes get to be over-complicated and that can be the fun part, however it can also take the fun out of it. I'm sure the first person that switched to cree led's killed a few corals in his day, and same goes for the first person to try out t5's.
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You make an excellent point here. In fact I made the same exact argument to SaylorsReef and PufferPunk about 10 months ago regarding making the switch from T5/MH to LED.
 
BADGUS said:
These seem to be able to support the easiest corals,i dont see any problems.good luck.
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Do you have any photos, links, or other info on tanks running these types of fixtures? If they really work they would be a perfect solution for the desktop tank I'm putting together, but I'm still skeptical.
 
dalbright82 said:
i'll take a photo of my light setup tonight if i have time while i fumble around with the fixing the skimmer
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I was speaking more to Gus on this since it would seem that he has seen/had/experienced a tank using these lights that supported coral long term. A pic of your setup would be great too though.
 
I have a 10g tank thats used as a QT with leathers and cloves and mushrooms that use these type of lights,or similar $12lights from lowes.Let me upload a pic.
 
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