custom hood for 10g planted?

[pica_nuttalli]

i'm wanting to set up a bright light planted 10 gallon aquarium. i'm not really interested in spending $30 or more for a cheap plastic hood with insufficient light, so i'm trying to figure out what the best (and hopefully most cost effective) way of building my own custom lighting would be.

any suggestions? i'm wanting to eventually have 3-4 wpg.

 

[soggysandwich]

i think that will be hard to acomplish without spending more than $30.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

its not about the money; its about what my money is buying. the absolute cheapest i can purchase a crappy hood is $30. an additional $5 might buy me something made out of better plastic. an extra $20 might fit a second bulb in somewhere. but i'm still not at my lighting goal!

i just want to spend my money efficiently; asking other people how they light their small tank is a good way to decide on the best way to achieve my goals.

 

[houndour]

I have a 5 gallon. I built a hood out of laminated chipboard. And got Interpet T5 compact lighting. But I'm in the UK. But generally things are cheaper in the US anyway. My lighting cost me about £20 for the tube and ballast and the hood...at a guess around £30. But I had to buy a HUGE bit of chipboard and only used a tiny bit. Got the guy to cut it up in shop to sizes then got my bf to build it for me!! I also had to buy screws, and some waterproof seal....that alone was about a fiver and there will be enough to use on another hood if I had to make another. So in total, approx £50 = $90 (at a guess - not sure what the rates are at the mo).

 

[zig]

Build your own hood and then use these guys to purchase the lights, the 36 watt kit is probably what you are looking for, but it will run you more than 30 Dollars, you could also look at their 13 watts kits and go 2x13watt, these will also run you more than 30 Dollars.

These guys are very very good for lighting if you are on a budget and know how to use a screwdriver.

AH Supply

 

[RYO]

Ive used the interpet t5 twin compact 2x 36w ,at the moment they are on the crappy plastic lid (waiting on building new 1, need more days in the week ) cost here was £25 for starter unit and £14 for tubes.

 

[pica_nuttalli]

*bump*

heh, i should have never said an explicit number. i'm prepared to spend as much as $100 to get this right--i just don't want to spend that much if i don't have to.

(thanks for the links zig!)

any mods that are reading this, if you think that i'd get more responses in DIY, i'd appreciate the relocation ) i was mostly just guessing when i put this in here.

 

[lljdma06]

For my 10g planted betta setup, I purchased a glass hood then two 15 watt Strips. It is quite bright now, I'm at 3WPG, which is nice. Each light fixture was about $20 and the glass hood (my second, I'm a clutz and dropped the 1st, a messy clean-up that was!) cost about $7. Of course, they are outfitted with full-spectrum bulbs. With the two strips, I can experiment with varying the amount of light during the day. I have only one stip on during the early morning and before I go to bed, then both are on for the full day. I still don't grow very many light hungry things, but my cryptocrynes are very nice and my anacharis isn't stringy. I find I have to prune a lot, though. They're do for one already and I've only had the plants for about 2 weeks. I'm not having a big problem with algae now, but time will tell.

I also have a 15h with a similiar setup except the second fixture is not a standard 15 W but a twin T-5 24" which sits atop the glass tank hood. The tank is considerably deeper, so I grow more low light plants in that tank, though it still gets about 2.87 WPG. As it is an older aquarium, 2 years, it had more of an algae problem. It also had plastics first then I changed to live, and I lost a lot of the algae and the ugly green stuff is replaced with only a little of the brown. I scrub it off when I do my weekly tank duties. That tank could use some pruning too.

But I am certainly no expert and there are people on this board with far more knowledge than I.