Hi, everybody Joey here again, and welcome back so in today's video
I'm going to show you how to build an led light for your aquarium. That's both cheap and very easy to build however
It's extremely capable of also growing plants in your aquarium. Which is a highly requested project from you guys for me now
it shouldn't go without saying that I've already have a couple of light builds on this channel from the past that are also capable of
growing plants in your aquarium
[so] if you want to check those out as well and see which one best suits your
capabilities and
Budgets be sure to do so so in last week's video is the final video to my planted tank build series
and if you remember the setup or the equipment video I showed you all of the equipment that I purchased for the aquarium and a
Lot of this equipment was things I've been wanting to try for a long while [what] I said in that video was most important though
I was going to start with these products and then systematically replace them with do-it-yourself alternatives so today
we're starting from the top and replacing the light if you remember I started off with a castle a 360 w [II]
Led light now. This is a fantastic light however it's a
$400 light five hundred dollars if you want the controller and almost close to
$600 if you want the gooseneck and extender that adds up fast [the] light
I'm going to show you only cost between [50] and [60] dollars and then
Additional cost if you want to build a canopy or what-have-you [now]
I'm not saying that this light is going to replace all of the castle lights
I don't know if it can I've only been able to test it on a few aquariums
But what I am saying is that it has completely replaced the castle on my aquarium, so in this video
I'm going to show you not only how to build it
But how to size it to your tank show you what it's capable of then I also want to try it on my goldfish
Aquarium as well as my Asian Arowana
tank because this type of light is so cheap and easy to make that it doesn't have to [be] used on a
Planted aquarium, you could use it on any aquarium before we begin though. Take a look at this which one
Do you think is the castle light and which one is the do-it-yourself alternative interesting right?
Well what I wanted to do for this video is simple
I wanted to be able to show you what this light is
Potentially capable of on your aquariums and to do so I got to show you plant growth with the light installed
However, I've been testing this specific light
Sporadically on my planted aquarium meaning that for a couple weeks
I [would] run it in them so back to the castle and then for a few more weeks
I would run it and switch it back to the castle [but] for this video
I decided I'm going to cut out all [of] the plants and
Shrink it down to only about [two] inches of plants toss
The new do-it-yourself light on it and then in a few weeks come back and show you the progression
However, you guys have been hounding me to do this light
But these builds take a lot of time
especially if I want to be able to show you these
Comparisons and results with that said though the new Nano aquarium build that you guys are going to see [shortly] has been running this do-it-yourself
Light exclusively just on a much smaller size and the growth has been stunning [the] plants are growing much faster
And I have no problems with [that] tank at all. That is a build that is completely do it yourself though
However like I said you'll [see] that shortly so as mentioned
I want to be able to chop out all the plants and show you comparison
But we're going to air this video a lot sooner than before
But what I discovered and what I thought was happening with this rotala that I chopped down is that when I cut it [down] I?
Exposed a ton of plants that were dying nothing, but stems and roots left after I cut it away
So when we eventually do an update [on] this tank?
It'll be extremely interesting to see what happens, so let's just jump right into the light
I decided that I could build almost any kind of light [that] I want
But there's a lot of things that come into play when I have to decide on which videos
I want to show you one it has to be cost-effective. I know a lot [of] you guys want to save money
I can't do these extremely large builds that put them way out of reality and touch for you guys
I also have to make sure that it's not that difficult because I truly want many of you to be able to take advantage
[of] a lot of these do-it-yourself
Projects, which in turn probably keep you in the hobby a lot longer [so] for this build I decided we're going to repurpose some existing
Lights now apparently flood lights have been used in the planted aquarium
Hobby for some time now unbeknownst to me because the planted aquarium
Hobby is something that I wasn't into until recently with that said there's [been] mixed reviews a lot of people are having [success] and some
Are not today, I'm going to share my success story. [I] jumped on Amazon, and I noticed that there was these really nice-looking
Led Flood lights that came with brackets and
Led chips that are very similar to the Kessel they came in [6,000] Kelvins
Which is the color temperature of the light meaning that it's really close to sunlight
and it has a waterproof rating of
IP65 meaning that you can splash water all over these and it's going to have no impact on its performance
[it] doesn't make it waterproof, but it certainly adds a massive layer of protection when putting something like this above your tank
[I] also chose these because it gives me a spotlight effect or more of a pendant look
Basically a small light that can hang directly over your tank
I also notice that they came in many different wattages
60 Watt 30 watt and 15 watt the 60 watt only costing 52 dollars
The 30 watt only costing 28 dollars and finally the 15 watt only costing 18 dollars at this price
It's really hard not [to] want to try them out the ones I got were made by Golson
But there's a tremendous amount of brands out there and not all of them are going to give you the same results that I got
With that said you don't have to get the same brand
I got the thing with these though is they don't come with a plug, so this is where the do-it-yourself comes into play
We're not only repurposing this floodlight to be an aquarium light, but we also need to incorporate some do-it-yourself
[so] I picked up some cheap grounded extension cords for only [$1] each on Amazon as well and chopped off the
Receptacle portion use a razor [and] some wire strippers
To expose the wire and then connected them to the led light as needed
Now the led lights will typically tell you which wire is which
And you'll be able to match those up to the extension Cord
[I] then took [some] shrink tape and cleaned up the wires to make it a little bit prettier now
The light was ready to go however. [I] have to admit that before I actually wired this up
I installed the light into the canopy that I built for the tank and then ran the wires
through the canopy
Followed by wiring it so we need to take a step back and talk [about] the canopy
Now of course if you don't want to build a canopy for your aquarium
You can just mount these over your tank somehow with something like a gooseneck
For example the castle light does come with a gooseneck
And this is kind of what it [looks] like if you were to put a 30 watt
led on it however
You can also jump on Amazon and pick up goose necks for as little as five or six bucks for me
I wanted to build a canopy system and have the light built into it
I also wanted it suspended from the ceiling and have a pulley system on it
But I didn't have time for all of that because I'm putting this video out three weeks than it was supposed to come out
So I cut some spare plywood up that I had in fact it was the wood that I had left
over from the office aquarium shelf and I built a small box out of it now the size of the box was the
dimensions of the actual stand and if you remember on the stand the stand is actually slightly bigger than
The aquarium itself, and I did this on purpose because I knew that one day
I'm gonna want to build a canopy and I want the canopy to also be slightly bigger than the aquarium
And it would be look more uniform if the stand was as well once I built the wooden box
I stained it a few times to match the color of the stand with stain that I had left over from the stand and then
Moved on to installing the light now the canopy
Technically didn't really cost me anything because it was scrap wood and you don't have to do this
You can install this however you want, but if you [already] have an existing canopy on your aquarium
This will be really [easy] to install now again this video is coming out a few weeks earlier than I had anticipated
And I didn't have a lot [of] mounting equipment
What I decided to do was take some spares nuts and bolts that I had and mount the light
Directly into the center of the canopy if you notice it has a little swing arm
And I can direct the light wherever I wanted to go as for hanging it ahead a few spare brackets
And then I had some garage door wires and connection pieces that I use to kind of hold up the light
Now this actually looks pretty horrible, but it's what I had at the time
I do plan on upgrading all of this in the near future, but just for the sake of getting this video out
This is all temporary. [I] then ran the wire up [through] my ceiling and
Drill the hole directly through my floor support and ran the wire through it the light is now suspended
exactly the same height as the
Castle light is now before I built this and suspended
Obviously, I just took the led light out and clipped it [onto] the [gooseneck] of the castle light
So I was able to test it and take it off easily with the light
Suspended though it now makes it more difficult to get in and out of your aquarium
Or so it might look I can easily take this off or I can just push it out [of] the way again
Just a temporary solution to get it done
so now let's talk [about] the light itself as I said this light isn't necessarily going to
Replace the castle as a whole but it certainly did the same thing the castle could on
This tank and as I already said I'm getting amazing results with my nano aquarium [again]
You'll see all of this progression in the week to come so how bright is this light and what is it capable of well?
I don't have a power meter however
We can kind of measure it with a cheap Lux meter which Lux means basically
How much visible light is coming out of it or how bright is it and to be honest?
They are actually pretty similar this 60 watt led is on par with the castle light turned up to 70 percent
which is what I ran it over this tank anyway the next thing you'll notice is that the
do-it-yourself version doesn't shimmer or create as much shimmer as the castle does why well it's because of the way the
Floodlights are designed the floodlights are designed to light up as much light in front of it as possible
[so] the light is spread out a lot more. Which is kind of beneficial to light up more [of] your aquarium
But as for penetration the castle is designed to penetrate deeper water, so you get less shimmer
But I also am not sure how deep of an aquarium this will be able to handle
With water 20 inches deep it's no problem at all so I can't see it being too much more of a problem in
Regularly sized tanks that are 24 inches tall you also can't dim this light like you can on the castle however
Just because you can't Dim
It doesn't mean you can't add some sort of a diffuser which brings up the next point
Is that [you] can't change the color of the light like you can on the castle so like I said this light is at
6000 Kelvin rating Whereas the Castle has a lot more flexibility in what color spectrum?
You can have although the castle was set to 6,000 anyway the benefit to the alternative the do-it-yourself version here
Is that [it's] really cheap and really easy to build
obviously
Just find a floodlight you like and that's going to be the color spectrum
You need and the wattage you require and wire up an extension cord to it is really that [simple] so anybody can do this
Now to size lighting a lot of the times watts per gallon doesn't work
But I'm running it at two watts per gallon and same with the Nano aquarium
And I'm getting fantastic results also on the 60 watt version
It's going to light up a 2x2
area with ease, [so]
basically for every 2 feet of aquarium you have you'll need one of these now obviously this is an [Anneli] D light that's going to
work on everybody
Situation and especially if you have a massively long tank, and you thought you're going to be able to light it for 50 bucks
This video is to show you what I've [been] able to replace on this aquarium now
Maybe you just want a nice bright
Solution for your aquariums using an led light that is kind of like a pendant style and is cheap and easy to set up
So let's take a look of what this will look like if it were to replace the lighting on this tank [now]
I was trying out different lights on this tank and right now. It has a 40 watt Led strip on it
That's 4 feet long [now] [when] we switch it over to a 15 watt [version]
You can see with [just] a single 15 watt version of this can do now
Let's take a look at the Asian, Arowana
aquarium if you remember we also have
Do-it-yourself lighting above that in pendant style and each one of them have led bulbs and they evenly light up the tank
But if we put a 15 watt version over this tank
[it] looks pretty great as well
Now because I'm not growing plants in these I'm not going to need a lot of these leds on this tank
Maybe just two on this tank and two on that tank now this isn't the end-all of do-it-yourself
Aquarium lights that are grow quarian plants. I do have a lot of plans to do future builds on more
Methods of building your own lights for your plants at aquarium however since that light is now replaced it's now time to move on to
something else and the next thing that I want to replace on the planted aquarium is a
Diffuser so as mentioned in the weeks to come you're gonna see a lot of different videos for planted aquariums however
I will [be] mixing in some other do-it-yourself projects, especially this do-it-yourself filter that I'm working on that
I'm really excited to show you and you'll see that in the coming weeks as well. Anyways hope that you guys enjoyed [today's] video
I'd also like to thank you for watching and if you join me next Sunday. I'll have a new do [yourself] project for you