[ds51]

seen this for a led light unit
to go over the top of my vivarium looks good

 

[Tijl]

nice! this could come in handy

 

[ds51]

yep i can see this being used in and around the house for a few differant thing
also in my man shed over the work bench would work great

 

[ashdavisa]

Ooh, this is a great solution. We had to get new shelving and went with wire surfaces instead of wood, which meant we had nowhere to mount LED's above the tanks. This would be super easy to suspend from wire racks!

 

[Tinc Tank]

This idea has circulated around the boards quite a bit in the past.

See this thread:
https://www.dendroboard.com/forum/parts-construction/88396-led-strip-lighting-vivarium.html

The general consensus seems to be that those LED rope lights can't put out near enough light to get decent plant growth and they're very inefficient.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

those LED rope lights

There is a wide range of LED tape available, some of which would be suitable (SD panels use LED tape, and are very good lights). Unfortunately, most of the offerings commonly available (on Amazon, etc.) don't list watts, lumens, color temp, or really any useful information other than price and how cool your backyard barbeque will look when you have these flashing different colors.

Here's some -- apparently -- good strips.

https://www.flexfireleds.com/LED-Flexible-strips-ultra-bright-led-strip-lights

There would be a lot of research necessary in order to build something that's actually functional, and it isn't clear that there would be any savings vs buying something of a proven design.

 

[ds51]

.

many thanks for that and the link
but I am in the uk so need to find something like these here
thanks any ways

 

[Pubfiction]

I hate to be a Debbie downer but this is not a good idea for vivariums and its hard for me to see a scenario where it is, that would not have a better solution.

What makes LEDs better than other lights is the fact that they are directional. Wrapping them around a tube literally takes the biggest advantage that LEDs have and reverses it to make them have the disadvantages of fluorescent lights.

Remember the days of fluorescent lights? People spent a great deal of effort and money to try to get the best reflectors to reflect more of the light down and waste less of it. But no matter what they bought or how much they spent light was still wasted.

LEDs are efficient and just so happen to direct all the light into the vivarium and that makes them even more efficient in certain scenarios, IE vivariums, street lights or ceiling lights where you have no interest in shining the light in more than one direction.

 

[Socratic Monologue]

I agree with all that.

I remember the heyday of T5HO in reefing when we all spent more on top-of-the-line spectral aluminum reflectors than we did on the lamps themselves, trying to minimize restrike. Even that was less than ideal; foil tape isn't much of a reflector at all.