12"x12" Led Light Options

[DaveIOW]

Hi, I have acquired a 5gal aquarium that I'm going to house a dwarf puffer in, the aquarium itself is bare, just a strip that runs 3 edges of the aquarium with a groove in.

I'm going to cut a Perspex 12x12 lid and attach 3 20mm strips at 90degrees to the lid, to sit in the grooves.

Now, I'm looking for a light solution that I can either bond onto the inside of this lid, or create another box with the led unit in, ontop of that, hinged to create a flap to feed in.

What I'm looking for is a LED light panel to fit to it.

I'm only going to want to grow low light plants in here, and the tank to stay fully low tech.

I was originally planning to dismantle a LED desk lamp, and use the light unit from it and bond that to the lid, however, a thread I found in this section mentioned the 'waterproof led strips' from eBay not being strong enough for growing anything and that each LED had to be at least 3w, pressumably the desk lamp won't be adequate either?

My long winded way of asking this question, is there a small (4-5") square unit I can buy and bond to the lid, that plugs into the mains that I can use to grow low light plants?

Here is the tank in question, hopefully you can see through my ramblings to have some idea what I'm on about!

 

[Zikofski]

If you are going with low tech then the led strips from eBay. Should be okay but I have not here anyone grow plants from them even low tech but let me know if it works

 

[DaveIOW]

I'm going to have a look round our local B&Q (hardware store for USA) tonight and see if I can find anything with a decent amount of output from it first, as it's local.

Making the first part of the lid tonight, I shall let you know if I find anything suitable

 

[DaveIOW]

Well, for anyone that's interested, I managed to find a 6w T4 light which was 271mm long including the fixing (ballast & fittings).

I've made a light reflector to fit it to get the maximum possible from it, at over 1watt/gallon, it's more than I was expecting.

It's not waterproof in any stretch of the imagination, so I've made a sealed Perspex box for it to sit in to keep it nice and dry, then going to add that to a hood for the aquarium that I'm going to make tomorrow evening.

I got the actual tank for free, 12x12x12 inch, and thought this was going to be a cheap way to set up a decent 5gal, however buying all the bits to build it, is going to bump me towards the cost ostander-bought tank with everything as standard!

However, I've had fun making it all and I guess that's what actually matters