The trickiest part of this build must have been the cutting and soldering. David Waltermyer chopped a Philips Hue Lightstrip Plus into six 1-foot sections and joined them with wires to create gaps, which meant soldering eleven ends in total. Each joined section was checked for light on a workbench before anything went near the tank, which strikes me as the kind of patience that separates a working retrofit from a dead strip hidden inside a hood.
The assembly is tidy. Three sections sit in each of two plastic hoods, glued into the interior reflectors, and the wiring between them runs through six-wire ribbon cable salvaged from old front-panel USB circuit boards. Every exposed joint and connection got a coat of clear silicone for moisture protection, and the cable to the control box was extended so the electronics could live well away from splashes. Given what happened to the original fluorescent tubes, which failed at the ballast, keeping the sensitive parts dry and distant seems like a smart call in my view.
What stands out is the restraint in how it runs. The lighting follows a schedule of white through the day and deep blue in the evening, with slow transitions instead of abrupt jumps, and the fish show no sign of being bothered. Modes for natural white, blue moonlight, red and green all exist in the setup, but the maker sticks to just the two daily colors.
The open question is the effect of anything livelier on the livestock. The maker has said that a constant strobe of colors would probably stress the fish eventually, while admitting that is only a guess. Two years of flawless daily cycling on the gentle schedule is good evidence for the current settings, but nobody can say for certain how the fish would cope with the wilder modes.
Project by David Waltermyer. Watch it on their YouTube channel: