DIY: Aquarium Light Fixtures

Building your own lighting system for your aquarium can save you money and allows you to tailor your system to the specific needs of your aquarium. Often, light given off the shelf and stock aquarium lighting is not sufficient for plant and coral needs, and the manufactured fixtures can be very expensive.

  1. Choosing Lighting

    • When building a new light for your aquarium, the most important step is to know what type of light you need and which will give you the most bang for your buck before you plan the design. Very-high-light-requirement tanks need more powerful lights such as metal halide or compact fluorescent; for lower-light setups fluorescent will work; and for small fish only tanks a simple incandescent might be the best and cheapest option.

      There are tradeoffs with each type of light you use. With more powerful lights, and on smaller tanks, heat buildup can be an issue and has to be dealt with using fans and venting to move the hot air away from the water.

    Kits

    • Many manufacturers offer lighting retrofit kits that are made to adapt to existing equipment. Most major aquarium manufacturers sell a standard sized wooden canopy with the tank, and generic retrofit kits can be purchased to fit directly into them. Some basic electrical wiring and installation skill is involved. This can often be the cheapest way of getting a professionally designed lighting system without the expense of an off-the-shelf plug-and-play fixture.

      Wooden canopies can be constructed to fit lighting kits if the tank did not already come with one. These are simple wooden boxes that sit on top of the edges of the tank and often have a door on the front or a top that lifts up for easy access. Smaller canopies can be made to be removed from the tank entirely when doing maintenance. If making your own canopy, consider adding a small fan to expel the heat buildup caused by the light to avoid dramatic swings in the water temperature during the daylight cycle.

    DIY

    • Individual fixture pieces can be purchased to make up your own light to fit your own specific needs. The common pieces that are needed include some sort of canopy or mounting fixture, a power cord, a ballast rated for the bulbs to be used, a socket and a reflector. For incandescent bulbs no ballast is needed.

      A good reflector is a must and is usually constructed of very reflective white or highly polished metal bent into a parabola shape. These reflect the light evenly across the surface of the water eliminating dark spots, and they reflect back the light emanating from the top of the bulb, eliminating wasted energy. The size of the canopy is usually determined by the footprint of the tank and size of the reflector.