[Termato]

My 2 cents.

LED lights are unnecessarily expensive these days. I'm making my own lights and it's going to cost about $30-40 for two rows of 8 foot lights that you can customize. You can buy 16' LED light strips off amazon for like $15. That'd give you four rows of 4 feet LEDs for $15. You wont beat that price anywhere.

I also have a few cheap LED bars I got from ebay that work great. I purchased a 48" Full Spectrum LED bar for about $40ish bucks. Make sure they're half watt LEDs because the .1 watts are worthless. For highlight, you might need 2 of them, but for medium light tanks one is more than enough.

good luck.

 

[Termato]

Good idea.. Only catch is you have to add at least $25 for a TIMER/programmer for those strips..
and if you go RGBW in 5630smd or other 1/2W leds you need to find a compatible roll (will be more than $15) or 4 rolls, one of each color...
Of course you ca ndo 1/2W for white and .1w for RGB..

Gooooood point. $5 timer from home depot and the color changer comes with the strip. Btw, I'm looking at the LEDMO 5050 RGB 300LEDs strip. You DO have to buy a $10 power adapter (I know...right) so that's $15 more dollars. You'd also have to find something to put this one (I'm using an old blown out hood and just glueing it to the inside of that hood) and that could add another $5. So yea, Jeff right on that hahaha. A little more than just $15 but it's still CHEAP for what you get. Those LEDs strips aren't the best quality but you get what you pay for.

$30 total and some time to make a light. Still a really good deal. I guess it's really worth for me because I'm going to be doings this to multiple tanks so getting 2-3 of those strips and a few power adapters will go a long way. I also already have timers, old hoods to install these on, etc.

Good luck!