{"id":78,"date":"2011-07-07T23:43:38","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T03:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/?p=78"},"modified":"2026-04-07T14:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T18:19:07","slug":"diy-led-aquarium-lighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/diy-led-aquarium-lighting\/","title":{"rendered":"DiY LED Aquarium Lighting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I put together a new LED lighting upgrade for my 8-gal Hex freshwater aquarium. The 8-watt screw in fluorescent wasn’t putting out enough light to grow plants. It might seem like 1-watt\/gal would be enough, but the bulb is omnidirectional and the reflector was garbage, I probably only got 4-watts to the water.<\/p>\n

The new setup uses 2 white and 2 royal Luxeon Rebel High Power LEDs<\/a>. I obtained them from Sparkfun Electronics<\/a> on a nice breakout board. The board makes them easy to solder and mount and I recommend it for prototyping and maybe final product. Sparkfun now sells the whites as a 3-in-1 board<\/a>. Note that you can get most items cheaper from Digi-Key<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I drove my 4 LEDs with a 15V, 1000mA power supply I had lying around from some other electronics device. I wired the LEDs up using a “BuckToot” LED constant current driver<\/a>. This regulates the current to the LEDs and provides a more steady light. They are run at 350 mA when on max. I also included a potentiometer inline with the LEDs to allow me to turn down their brightness. This is a nice feature as these LEDs are BRIGHT. In larger setups I also suggest wiring blue and white LEDs separately with independent potentiometers to allow the blue\/white levels to be fine tuned.<\/p>\n

I used a barrel jack to allow the AC adapter to plug right in. The BuckToot is visible center with the pot below it.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I mounted the 4 LEDs to an aluminum plate I had lying around and then I added a finned heat sink for good measure. This keeps the setup from getting too hot, but I may add a fan to bring temperatures even lower.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

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Installed in hood of 8-gallon hex.<\/em><\/p>\n

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For more info, check the Nano-reef.com Lighting<\/a> forum.
\nSparkfun Electroncis<\/a>
\nDigi-key Electronics<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I put together a new LED lighting upgrade for my 8-gal Hex freshwater aquarium. The 8-watt screw in fluorescent wasn’t putting out enough light to grow plants. It might seem like 1-watt\/gal would be enough, but the bulb is omnidirectional and the reflector … Continue readingDiY LED Aquarium Lighting<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquarium-projects","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.justinmcclellan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}