Thoughts On Diy Fluorescent Lights?

[attibones]

My tank is 36 inches long. Right now the tank is rocking a 17 watt 24 inch t8 which is really hurting my plants. It is a 35 gallon tank. I would like to hit around 60 watts of total lighting. 
 
Trouble is, I can't seem to find any lights at this size. So I started looking for 18 inch lights. If I did two 18 shop lights, then I'd have the length covered and I could probably find double ballast fixtures. Nope. No, shop lights are a standard 48 inches, a good twelve inches longer than I need. I was hoping to hit right under or a little over 36 inches so that I could just set the lights on my tank hood. I don't really know much about hanging the lights.
 
So could I attach the appropriate sized ballasts to a casing and add a reflector and still keep the whole project under fifty dollars? More than that and I might as well buy an aquarium rated lighting system. I'm just trying to save some money. If so, how would I do that? I'm not so educated on electrical construction.
 
If that doesn't work, should I just get a 48 incher and hang it over my tank? How close to the hood does the light need to be? How easy are they to maintain? Would six inches of overhang on either side matter that much? Could I just set the light on the tank? 
 
If anyone has any alternate ideas, I would love to hear them.
 
I want to keep my total budget under fifty dollars. The 48 inch lights are mostly under 20 dollars which is totally doable.

 

[Byron]

This is not an easy fix, I have found from experience.  LED lighting is good if you know what you're getting, though expensive.
 
What sort of planted tank do you intend?  I have very low-light plants (Java Fern, Java Moss, plus floating) in my 3-foot 33g which has a single 30-inch T8 tube over it, and it is perfect.  But light-requiring lower plants would likely struggle.  Given the light situation, I deliberately went with lots of wood for a forest lagoon aquascape, though the Java Fern has grown so well it is filling half the tank now.  If you went with something like this, even your present fixture could work with a good tube; I have a Life-Glo which is brighter light than other tubes in the same length.
 
Byron.

 

[attibones]

I had some very healthy Cyprus helferi, several species of crypts, some jungle val, and what may have been cabomba (and is coming back), not to mention some bacopa and anubias species (which are doing fine). I have some amazon swords which are doing well and some water wisteria which has really gotten some good roots lately. But most of my plants died. It's a Walstad tank (kinda, I also run a cycled filter because I want a bit more fish than a standard Walstad could really handle) so the plants are kind of necessary. It was looking fantastic when I first planted everything. Now it looks in shambles. I have the helferi in another tank with better lighting (no CO2, but plant substrate) and it is doing really well. I love the look of that plant and really want some more of it.

I also want to get some sag and pennywort and a few more val species, but I don't think I can until I he my lights handled.

 

[Byron]

I would agree; with some of these plants, you will need more light intensity.  To your original question on DIY, I did this for my big tank a five-foot 115g, when the ballast on the T8 fixture went earlier this year.  Impossible to find fixtures anywhere, local or online, and I don't know enough about LED to spend that kind of money, so I decided to try a repair.  For $30 I got a dual tube 4-foot shop fixture, installed it in the housing after removing the old, and now have a brand new light.  If you could find a 36-inch dual light T8 fixture you could probably do much the same.  Another nice thing about T8 dual tube is being able to use the less expensive tubes like the Phillips or Sylvania 5000K and 6500K mix; ideal light.
 
Byron.

 

[attibones]

I looked at lowes on the net but I didn't see much in my length, though the website didn't make it easy for me to look at lengths. I'll check some other stores and see if anything else can help me look for my length. I definitely wanted to do a dual ballast.

 

[ian_m]

24" T8 @ 18W is a Juwel tube length.
 
To get brighter you can replace with a Juwel length T5 24" @ 28W which being the more efficient T5 & 28W will give loads more light. Enough for you to think about controlling lighting period to keep algae at bay.

http/www.arcadia-aquatic.com/original-tropical-lamps/

Arcadia do a T5 controller with waterproof caps as well.

http/www.arcadia-aquatic.com/ultra-seal-t5-controller/

I think this may be the very same upgrade my mate did replacing his old T8 tube with T5 unit. His plants went bonkers, growing an inch a day until they exhausted all the food in the tank then melted away and algae took over !!! He now has light on for a couple of hours (5 hours) a day, has some darkened film to reduce light intensity (still brighter than T8 though)  and doses with couple of ml liquid carbon and fertilisers a couple times a week. No algae and plants growing healthily.