Help with lighting please = need advice fast

[gpx1200]

if yor any good at diy or at least have some basic soldering skills you can build a diy led light for probably under $100 that will be good enuf for now and be expandable later simply by adding more strings of leds
i just did a quick list of parts
48 inch aluminum c-chanell from home depot $5-10
700ma non dimable driver $16 or
1050ma non dimable driver $26 or
1300ma dimable driver $36
9 royal blue cree xte leds w/80* lenses $38.25
5 neautral white xpg led w/80* lenses $30
thermal adhesive $7
remove the guts from the flouresent hood you have and mount this strip inside, it will provide more light and lees heat and use less electricty plus you can upgrade later by adding more strips along with a controler for sunrise/sunset efects.
for the best economy you could start with the 700ma driver and later upgrade to the 1300 dimable and use the 700 to add some uv or other colors that only go up to 700ma (the whites and blues can go to 1500)
this is what i would do the best part about led's is never having to buy new bulbs and never wondering if they need replacing
instead of buying a new set of t5 bulbs in 8-12 months you could add another string of leds or a diming controler

 

[prostock442]

Thank you GPX but I'm not a DIY kind of guy, I'd burn my house down trying to build one but thank you for taking the time to list out all that info. Hopefully someone else will benefit from it.

 

[gpx1200]

for a few more bucks you could get solderless led's and wire conecters all you'd have to do is glue them to the c-chanell and mount it in the hood make a few twisted wire conections and cover them with heatshrink tubing and your done, it's not hard at all and hangign low voltage led's over your tank is alot safer than any other kind if lighting

 

[prostock442]

Here's another question.......... How many Power Cords should the light have? I've seen them with 1, 2 or 3 Cords. What is the reason & how important is this????

What do you think about this light? Is it any good? Only 1 power cord though. Remember, my tank is 75 FOWLR & will be getting into Soft Corals in the future.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/48-324W-T5-...701?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43b05a5085


Or this light which is 4 Bulbs. Do I really Need 6 bulbs or will 4 do????

http://www.ebay.com/itm/48-216W-4x5...638?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35c2798d5e

 

[Owen386]

Separate cords are so that you can perform different lighting effects. I.e. blue bulbs on one cord daylights on another
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