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Moonlight

3K views 13 replies 7 participants last post by  Angel079 
#1 ·
Anybody have any experiance with setting up a moonlight for a tank? like using blue LED lights or something
 
#2 ·
I was actually debating to make a thread about that or not.

You option is LED's or cold cathodes. Cold cathodes are generally easier unless you understand how to wire LED's together with resistors and all that. You can simplify the LED's by buying one of those premade chains. Cold cathodes are very easy to do and cheaper. For either one you need a AC/DC converter for cold cathodes a adjustable one is ideal because you can dim them. Or you can use a old phone charger or something similar if it has a good enough output.

I did this yesterday. My first LED wiring:-D! I'm so happy with myself.



 
#4 ·
If I wired it different it could a little brighter. It is brighter than it looks in the pic, but my camera hates the blue light. I haven't figured if that one is too bright or not yet. I can post pics later of the cold cathods running on my 55gal. With those I can control the brightness. If they are fully powered the fish will stay awake.

Heres a site that goes over how to use cold cathodes. Installing them is your hood is harder than wiring. Most people have a spare ac/dc converter that will work to power them. These are like old phone chargers, toy chargers,ect. Any of those plugs that are big bulky square boxes are usually ac/dc converters. It will say what their output is. That page gives some figures to which ones will light and which ones won't. You usually don't need to cut up a adapter unless its got a really tiny plug on it.
 
#10 ·
I've been looking at ways to make an LED moonlight, but got impatient. So in the interim, until I put one together, I used a small fixture from a 1 gallon hex tank I have laying around. I switched the bulb to a 15w blue light and hung it on the back of my Coralife fixture. Works great and it was cheap. Fixture = free, Bulb = $2.49.
 
#12 ·
Looks all cool, no doubt bout that.

A side note to think about for a min thou: when doing this in planted tanks; Do you all know that plants require a full dark period of around 10hrs per day?
Also bare in mind fish can not run off into another room or anything to go to sleep while these LEDs are on and they don't have eye lids like we do - While I don't know about the exact studies about sleep deprivation on fish, judging from a human perspective where its used for torture, I highly doubt its healthy long run; so turning the normal lights off and LED on and vise vera in the morning can not be healthy in the long wrong.;-)
 
#13 ·
That is an interesting though, but a proper moonlight should not keep the fish awake. The cold cathodes can run too bright, but are normally run much dimmer and all the fish show their normal sleep behavior. Its the same with the LED's if you use to many of them. I ran the LED one last night for about an hour then checked on the tank. All of my garras were asleep in their normal sleep spots. Tapping the glass got no reaction from them so there were defiantly asleep.

As far as the plants you are correct about that. However with LED lights and plants you still need a certain number of WPG, usually the same number as if you were running metal halides on the tank. Also 3-watt leds are used for plant growing. I have 4 small LED's running that all together make up about 1 watt or less.

Cold cathodes are more powerfull than the LED's, using up 3-6watts total. As far as I know they are totally worthless for plantlife. Thats what they say at least. We use to say that about LED's too though. Either way they work great for moonlighting, just not for growing things yet. I think its possible... I've seen people try it before with mixing lots of tubes together. DIY results I have no seen yet.

BTW has anyone else noticed if you take your lights off the timer and let them run way longer the plants still stop photosynthesis:shock:. Its like they have a internal clock. Sometimes my lights get left on till 3am and the stem plant have all their leaves pointing straight up like its dark.

also plants and fish survive just fine in the wild with the moonlight...
 
#14 ·
Mikaila31 I didn't wanna criticize your DYI projects here by no means, just wanted to add some facts that one should watch out for when builind / buying these things. Specially some of these store bought high end bright blue wanna be moon lights ;-)
Naturally most all fish we house in tanks are found in forest river set ups that are dense with plants in the water and outside, I think its safe to say moon light coming through all this set up is very slim to non.
 
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