monkey4life
New member
Not the prettiest DIY, but it's been growing everything so far so I figured see what thoughts you guys might have.
These are the PAR 27 LED's spotlights found online for roughly $5-8/ea, coupled with waterproof sockets from the hardware store -$3/ea. Add in some 2" conduit brackets and an old PC fan, plus a 12v power supply from the thrift store, and bingo, a 45watt nano LED fixture for under $30 bucks.
Keep in mind this is not dimmable, and it's very limited on color selection unless you feel inclined to swap out the actual chips on the board. I removed the 'lenses' so that they spread was more acceptable (simple screw cap) They have 5 3 watt led chips per housing. Color is certainly more on the white end, but I plan on adding a blue 5050 stunner strip to see if that balances it out.
I'm using 2 combo bulbs and one cool white bulb (total 4ea 3w blues, 6ea 3w's that look about 12k, and 5ea cool whites)
Tank (5.5 gallon) for reference to color and intensity. They are sitting roughly 4" above the surface. You could easily swap the cool white bulb for a blue or combo bulb for the deep water look.
These are the PAR 27 LED's spotlights found online for roughly $5-8/ea, coupled with waterproof sockets from the hardware store -$3/ea. Add in some 2" conduit brackets and an old PC fan, plus a 12v power supply from the thrift store, and bingo, a 45watt nano LED fixture for under $30 bucks.
Keep in mind this is not dimmable, and it's very limited on color selection unless you feel inclined to swap out the actual chips on the board. I removed the 'lenses' so that they spread was more acceptable (simple screw cap) They have 5 3 watt led chips per housing. Color is certainly more on the white end, but I plan on adding a blue 5050 stunner strip to see if that balances it out.
I'm using 2 combo bulbs and one cool white bulb (total 4ea 3w blues, 6ea 3w's that look about 12k, and 5ea cool whites)
Tank (5.5 gallon) for reference to color and intensity. They are sitting roughly 4" above the surface. You could easily swap the cool white bulb for a blue or combo bulb for the deep water look.
