DIY LED light for planted tanks

[swampy1972]

It's great. You can get a sense of it in the reflection on the wall in the back of the photo. I should take a pic or video to show the full effect.
You can make out the rotating filter return on the right of screen. Apart from the wave effect it has in the tank, it means the light shimmer isn't constant which I personally like.

[Old Dave]

So do they make LEDs for a DIY UV filter??

Can you control some of the "wasted" heat back into the tank?
Good read.

Dave

[Nev]

They have uv leds but not the right wave lenght for sterilising.

[ILLUSN]

sorry to Necro an old thread but I thought I'd give an update on this original light 4 years on.
it got a slight remodel to cluster the LEDs and remove the disco effect but the base LED's are the same except for the whites which were replced with 6500k T6 XML's and a mix of green (535nm and turquoise 500nm) added to the mix to change the harsh purple to a cooler white light. 60 degree optics were also fitted to better focus the light and help with the colour mixing.
just as an FYI the original 6500k epistars are now lighting up my transformers display cases and are still going strong.
the new layout is shown below.

I can safely say that after 4 years of 12 hours a day these little diodes (the blue and red) have truly proved their worth. I'll run the par meter over them when I get the chance, even without the baseline I'm not expecting much degradation given the crazy cooling I built into this light.

[ILLUSN]

horrid photo of one of the led clusters, seems I need to glue back on 1 of the optics.

will have to run the PAR meter over it tomorrow night and post up the curve. I think its about 150 par under each cluster from 350mm height
quick pic of the plants in the "cutting" tank and the lone resident my bargain basement $2 halfmoon betta