I'm new to the forum - this is my first post, hopefully it's in the right spot.
I've kept fish-only tanks for years but I'd really love to switch my tanks from plastic plants to real plants.
Specifically, I have a 10-gallon in mind for my first planted tank. I'd like to do a DIY LED lighting set-up. Luckily, my boyfriend has experience playing with LEDs so all I really need to do is figure out what parts I need, and he can help me with the rest.
This is what I'm thinking of:
I'd like it to have moonlighting, and rapidLED sells a 2-LED moonlighting kit that I think might work here. The main tank lighting (XP-Gs and XP-Es) would be dimmable, since I want to keep this to the low-light/low-tech side of things, and I think the 3W Crees (from what I've read) are too bright if run to their full power. But I'm wondering, would 6 LEDs for the main light provide fairly even lighting, or should I add more to the array so that I don't have really dim spots in the tank?
Also, from what I've read, I don't think I need optics since this is just a 10-gallon tank. As for drivers, the kits I've seen seem to either use the Mean well ELN-60-48D or the ELN-60-48P so I think I'll go with that, but I'm not sure what the difference between them is.
I think I also read somewhere in this forum, that someone had the idea of hooking up the cool whites and royal blues to 2 different drivers, so that the lighting temperature can be fine-tuned to get the nicest colour display from the fish. Am I remembering that correctly? Would that be a good idea here, or is a 50-50 split between cool whites and royal blues already pretty decent for display lighting?
That's all I can think of to ask now, but if it seems like I might have overlooked something, please feel free to tell me that too!
I've kept fish-only tanks for years but I'd really love to switch my tanks from plastic plants to real plants.
Specifically, I have a 10-gallon in mind for my first planted tank. I'd like to do a DIY LED lighting set-up. Luckily, my boyfriend has experience playing with LEDs so all I really need to do is figure out what parts I need, and he can help me with the rest.
This is what I'm thinking of:
I'd like it to have moonlighting, and rapidLED sells a 2-LED moonlighting kit that I think might work here. The main tank lighting (XP-Gs and XP-Es) would be dimmable, since I want to keep this to the low-light/low-tech side of things, and I think the 3W Crees (from what I've read) are too bright if run to their full power. But I'm wondering, would 6 LEDs for the main light provide fairly even lighting, or should I add more to the array so that I don't have really dim spots in the tank?
Also, from what I've read, I don't think I need optics since this is just a 10-gallon tank. As for drivers, the kits I've seen seem to either use the Mean well ELN-60-48D or the ELN-60-48P so I think I'll go with that, but I'm not sure what the difference between them is.
I think I also read somewhere in this forum, that someone had the idea of hooking up the cool whites and royal blues to 2 different drivers, so that the lighting temperature can be fine-tuned to get the nicest colour display from the fish. Am I remembering that correctly? Would that be a good idea here, or is a 50-50 split between cool whites and royal blues already pretty decent for display lighting?
That's all I can think of to ask now, but if it seems like I might have overlooked something, please feel free to tell me that too!