ATS lighting

[Gobi-Wan]

hi all. I have had major success over the last year with my diy algae scrubber. My screen is lit by a "100 watt" equivalent led grow light on each side, the Chinese made Edison style base with maybe 40 or 50 little red and blue diodes and aluminum heatsink fins.
Anyway I am in the middle of building a 125 setup to upgrade from my current 75 setup, and the new ATS will be capable of housing up to a 10" wide by 12" tall screen. I no longer want to use the Edison style socket fixtures but instead want a square unit that will sit very close to the acrylic enclosure and be similar in size to the screen. Does anyone have experience with the several dozen options for these on Amazon? It seems the most common ones that are in my size range are 45w units that are about 9x9 inches square. This would be a downgrade in wattage and I am wondering if it would be sufficient for my new setup? Any advice is appreciated.

 

[Michael Lane]

I've used one of these and it grew a bunch of aglae for me. I do think there are a couple of issues with them.

• The case is really flimsy plastic, which is fine, but I was expecting something a little more rigid.
• The LEDs are directly exposed through holes in the case. I had several burn out due to salt creep. I ended up adding an acyrlic sheet to the front with some silicone to fix that problem.
• The light isn't grounded, so there is a potential of mains voltage contact.
• As always, build quality is worth inspecting. In mine, the shrink tubing around one of my drivers had not been formed. As a result, it could have been possible for the driver board to short out on the thin aluminum pcb.

Here's how mine was when I received it.

I just pushed the board back into the shrink tubing and applied heat to finish the job.

 

[Gobi-Wan]

I've used one of these and it grew a bunch of aglae for me. I do think there are a couple of issues with them.

• The case is really flimsy plastic, which is fine, but I was expecting something a little more rigid.
• The LEDs are directly exposed through holes in the case. I had several burn out due to salt creep. I ended up adding an acyrlic sheet to the front with some silicone to fix that problem.
• The light isn't grounded, so there is a potential of mains voltage contact.
• As always, build quality is worth inspecting. In mine, the shrink tubing around one of my drivers had not been formed. As a result, it could have been possible for the driver board to short out on the thin aluminum pcb.

Here's how mine was when I received it.

I just pushed the board back into the shrink tubing and applied heat to finish the job.

Thank you this is helpful

 

[Ratherbeflyen]

I just got four 10 watt deep red (660nm) LEDs on ebay. Mounted them to some heat syncs, two on each side, and stuck them in my DIY scrubber. I'm running them off a TC420 LED controller I was already using for the rest of my sump.

I clipped the corners, otherwise the screen is a full 10.5" x 13.5", and it works great.