My Nano 15L refurb and DIY light

Is that Bacopa monieri growing emersed in the first set of pic's on this page?
Verry pretty little nano, I also like the little fissidens bush.

 

Yes that is bacopa monieri in the beginning. not sure what you mean by the beginning of this page but there has been bacopa m in this tank when i started it up. the tank looks way different to anything previously, i have decided not to post progress photos of it currently but will only post the final pic when i have completed the scape, prob will take another 2 months.

yea trimmed that fissidens bush recently, im in the process of making one that is 10X the size for another tank.

 

Update!! been a while...

I have tossed the cfls.. was running 1X18w and 1X14W and found that i could not fit it all in.
soooo.... i have gone the DIY led route... and WOW... LEDS are the BEST!!!!

 

Sweet that is a monster heat sink for the leds how much did this set you back?

Nice setup.

 

@cheekychops I see you have 3 different colour types LED how come?

 

A few hundred bucks. There are different color lights for a few reasons. I am using 6 leds here, 4x cool white 6000-6500k 1X warm white 3000-3500k (REDDISH) and a royal blue led. Now the different colors is so that I make sure that I have all the light spectrums that plants need for growing. If you have alot of green and yellow in your light spectrum for your plants this is bad because plants photosynthasize better at certain Blue and red frequencies of the light spectrum. It has been seen that cool white provides a good balance between these two. But I put the other 2 leds in there just to make sure that I do get these frequencies for better plant growth.

The other nice thing about adding the colors is so that the blues and reds in your tank show up better. so if you put more blue lights .. the blues in your fish will become more prominent.

Anyways... this is my thinking behind my decisions of color choice, if anyone knows any differently I would gladly like to hear it.

 

@cheekychops another question how do you know how many led to use?

 

I found this information when working it out. please note that it is inches and not centimeters.

How Many LEDs to use for my tank?

When building a LED light unit for your tank, the first question comes to your mind is- how many LEDs to use. The rule of thumb says-

Numbers of LED to use = The area of footprint of your tank / 22.

Let’s say your tanks is 24â€x12â€x14†[LxBxH] the area of the base would be- 24â€x12â€= 288 sq inch.
Now to calculate the no of LEDs to use- 288/22= Around 13 LEDs would be needed.

this will also matter depending on what led you are using, in my case 3w leds

 

Thanks a lot this info helps

 

Just love this tank!

 

Sweet looking nice, what did you use for the background?

 

That is one awesome tank. The big rock on the right is slightly out of preportion to the feel, I would perhaps try with it out?

But otherwise it is a very inspirational tank!Well done!

 

Wow I love it, when I setup my nano again wish I can get it looking as awesome as yours

 

thanks 4 the compliments.
the background is some light blue plastic that i found in the garden shed.

 

Wow, your new scape is beautiful! The old one had a lot of charm (loved the phoenix moss rock and the pennywort especially) but this new scape really tells a story. I especially love that pathway beneath the rock... I'm definitely gonna take a few pointers from you!

And your Betta is so pretty too!

 

Tank looks really great, so crisp!

 

Tank looks fantastic.

 

Totm!

 

the multicolor leds make a big difference in getting the colors right!!