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I was the first to test and use these types lights on waterfall scrubbers in the year 2010, as a way of getting away from fluorescent bulbs. There is a side-by-side test of LED vs CFL that I did in 2011 on youtube.
The LED lights at first were expensive and cost $150 for one set shipped from China. But the pink “plant grow” colors worked well, and the heat was less. The lifespan was also longer, and it was not fragile to ship to customers. So I started using them on the first waterfall ATS algae scrubbers, which I invented in the year 2008; here is the acrylic box with a bottom shelf for the lights to set on, and a top shelf above the lights for protection; see photo.
Currently, all waterfall scrubbers for sale by others use this same open source free-to-copy waterfall scrubber design because it kind of works, and because the design was given away for free by me. It has problems, but again, it’s free to copy. And almost all pre-made scrubber builders also now use those metal-case LED bolt-on lights, mainly because they now cost only $5 including shipping from China. This makes the cost of those pre-made scrubbers artificially low, because they don’t have to make the lights safe (or even test the lights for safety), and this transfers the electrical risk to you, the customer. This typical Ebay listing of 20 lights for $99 even says "U.S. stock" to make it less apparent that they are from China; see photo.
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