Menard's $9 30" LED Shoplight

[Chris]

Ran into this deal this morning and thought I'd share. Menards has a 30" LED light for about $9 - color temp is about 4000K, so rather orange, and it's realistically probably going to be best suited for low-medium light plants, but it's a great price if you just need to light your tanks and grow some crypts or something. https://www.menards.com/main/lighting-ceiling-fans/indoor-lighting/shop-lights/performax-trade-3000-lumen-30-led-shop-light/gt-sl3000-lnk/p-1642874298745442-c-1472133557086.htm

 

I picked up 4. With these 4, I could theoretically light every tank on my 72" rack. My only concern is longevity - if they last 2 years, it's a good deal. 3 months? Not worth the trouble.

 

So far I've noticed they get rather warm, but there's very little to their construction. Very flimsy, so probably not much in the way of a heatsink built in.

 

Not endorsing them (I've only had them for a couple hours!), but might be worth trying if you're wanting to light some tanks cheaply and aren't too picky about the color of the lighting.

[Riiz]

That's a lot of wattage/lumens for a 30" strip light. Would be good to light a fishroom with on the cheap, seeing that they can be daisy-chained together too.

[Cory]

Lets see some pics of them on the tanks .I've used LED shop lights in the past, some are dang near orange and I couldn't stand it and some were pretty good. A lot of em were just straight up too powerful for the tanks I was trying to use em on.

[Chris]

 

@Cory

 

Color is pretty close to what it looks like to my eye. It might be a tad bit more orange than in the pics

 

 

Excuse the tanks. Been doing some replanting and water changes today.

 

There isn't a whole lot to them - they might weigh 3-4 lbs, something like that.

 

In terms of output to the eye, they look like they get roughly as bright as the OG 30" stingrays I had on these tanks. Warmer color, but roughly the same brightness. These are suspended 12" or so off the tank, and the tanks are cloudy - so I expect everything to look differently in a few days. I'll update with clearer pics soon.

Edited Saturday at 09:01 PM by Chris

[Huck]

On some of my tanks I use cheap under cabinet lights. They fit well under a gladiator rack, and don't give me problems with algae for the most part. 

 

Of course, on display tanks I use fluval planted 3.0 or coop lights (bought a few up since they're going away).

 

I do kind of like going really low with my lighting. Unless it is a CO2 display tank, I don't see the use in having so much light.