77 Watt DIY Aquarium LED Light Fixture

My old T5 fixture burned out but I really liked the aluminum body so I decided to give it new life by modifying it into a modern LED Light. I decided that the ultra bright LED strips providing 14W per meter would be sufficiently powerful for the experiment.

So I maxed the space I had with 10 x 50cm LED Strips providing 77 Watts of light. I used a mix of cool white, blue and red strips to mimic the targeted light spectrum. Cooling proved essential so I unwillingly drilled some ugly holes in my fixture and mounted 2 x 3" slim PC fans running on 12v. I used a couple of resistors to slow the fans speeds down for a silent performance. The fixture is now running at 30C on full LED power which is fine according to the led strip specifications.

Now I will wait to see if my plants like the new "sun" or not :) Wish me luck!

Thanks for watching!
Your comments will be appreciated!

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Do It Yourself
• Aquarium
• Light
• Led
• diy

[shinobitoshi]

I would really like to know howy ou wired this up. Willing to share?

[rollbg]

@shinobitoshi pretty simple really. I have 11 led stripes that run on 12V. I wired them in two groups 6 and 5 stripes and used the buttons on the body to control the two arrays. Nothing else is necessary for the lights. The fans also run on 12V but in order to lower their speed for silent performance I used a couple of resistors in parallel. I also powered the fans from both light buttons using diodes to get the fans running no matter which array is on!

[dubesky]

Where are th LEDs from