Would flexible LED strips work for culturing phytoplankton?

[Elbereth]

This is a question for those of you who culture phytoplankton. I've just set up my first Nannochloropsis culture similarly to the bucket set-up in this thread: www.reef2reef.com/threads/culturing-phytoplankton.59497/

But I was wondering if I could use flexible LED strips around the sides of the bucket instead of lightbulb(s). Something like this:

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

 

[T-J]

Yup!
There's a bunch of videos on YouTube of people doing this. I think one of the culturing kits even include the LED strip lights instead of a standard light.

 

[Joe31415]

If you've seen pictures of setups like this, that's exactly what they're doing. There's an LED strip wrapped around the jar (twice), facing in, under the black part in the middle.
If you go to poseidonreefsystems.com, you can buy them (mostly) fully assembled.

 

[Elbereth]

Thank you both! I didn't think to check Youtube.

Those wide LED bands would be perfect. I'll see if I can hunt something like that down.

 

[Joe31415]

Those wide LED bands would be perfect.

Are you talking about the one I linked to? The strips are just the normal width of any other LED strip. He then goes around it with foil tape to reflect some of the light back in and covers it with that big rubber strip to make it look nice (and presumably to protect the wiring).

 

[Elbereth]

Oh I see. I thought it was a ready-made product. Thank you!

 

[HeyLookItsCaps]

Check out phyto tanks by Poseidon reef systems. I just went with their product because I don’t think I could’ve pulled it off as cleanly, but they use a flexible led strip belly band type setup