Blue Lighting

[degsod]

Agreed. The whole point of a couple of hours of blue light is to recreate natural conditions.

Indeed it is.

There is however another benefit to it - No, not just that it looks good and brings colours out - But it allows you to see you precious fish without promoting algal growth.

I reduced the amount of daylight when I installed my evening LED's and it had a good impact on algae.

Also bear in mind - If you cant get a dimmer - you can still adjust the voltage. - Just watch out though coz some LEDs only work at a set voltage.

I am looking at PWM dimming which is a better way of dimming an LED as you keep the voltage and current steady on the LED's, I was going to go down the PIC route as I could then program the LED's to come on say over a 2 hour period to come up to full brightness then stay on for 4 hours at full then go down to zero over another 2 hours. The only proble is that I will have to learn how to program the PIC's.

I might just go for a simple 555 timer circuit for the mrk 1 dimmer LOL

 

[Infidel_Uk]

i agree , natural daylight cant be replaced , but in all seriousness , how will anyone know if the fish are any happier for it ? [ the addition of leds ]

my lights are all on dimmers so the fish would never be in complete darkness , even at 3 am there is low level light , i do see the point of adding lights after daylight hours , but i dont think there will be any noticeable difference in the fish or the way they behave , i see it as more of a user benefit if anything , and thats fine too !

 

[JSmails]

i agree , natural daylight cant be replaced , but in all seriousness , how will anyone know if the fish are any happier for it ? [ the addition of leds ]

my lights are all on dimmers so the fish would never be in complete darkness , even at 3 am there is low level light , i do see the point of adding lights after daylight hours , but i dont think there will be any noticeable difference in the fish or the way they behave , i see it as more of a user benefit if anything , and thats fine too !

What sort of lights and dimmers do you use? Are they easy to set up? Ive not looked at these before

 

[degsod]

White LED's only

White and Blue on together

Blue only

 

[paulbr1]

What do you think about the idea of Fibre optics with a choice of colour.

You could feed the fibre down in one cornerof the tank then under the substrate and have the different ends coming up to highlight either coral, plant, or decoration - this is quite easy to acomplish and would be like using mini spotlights in there.

Let me know your thoughts - I am trying to source some fibre at the moment and will post pics as and when - I would like some thoughts though before I commit

Paul.

 

[degsod]

What do you think about the idea of Fibre optics with a choice of colour.

You could feed the fibre down in one cornerof the tank then under the substrate and have the different ends coming up to highlight either coral, plant, or decoration - this is quite easy to acomplish and would be like using mini spotlights in there.

Let me know your thoughts - I am trying to source some fibre at the moment and will post pics as and when - I would like some thoughts though before I commit

Paul.

The only problem with the fibre optics is that they can be quite brittle so if you have inquisitive fish in there or plecs the fibre might get damaged, this is easily overcome by protecting the fibre in a sleeve. You would also have to bundle several fibres together to get the light output. But yes it sounds good.

Have you considered the internal LED's which attach to the internal glass underwater by suckers, these are quite good.

Regards

Derek

 

[paulbr1]

Hi, as to brittle most fibre is now Polymer so breakage wouldn't be an issue - didn't know about the sub-leds though

I will try it and post.

Paul.

 

[degsod]

Hi, as to brittle most fibre is now Polymer so breakage wouldn't be an issue - didn't know about the sub-leds though

I will try it and post.

Paul.

Ok cool, you can ge them from most LFS's and I have seen them in Pets@home

 

[Bobtastic]

Is there an agreed combination of light colours that best simulate a sunrise/sunset? Like white that mirges to red/orange that mirges to blue which fades to black?

I have a feeling that would end up being quite complicated, but would be pretty kewl to watch over the course of a morning/evening.

 

[saltynay]

Polymer isn't a plastic it is a description of the type of molecular chain present and how it was created. Just thought I would clarify in case anyone viewed this article whilst researching.

 

[paulbr1]

Looks like plastic

And is strong and very flexible and you can power it from either a poweful tungston source or LED, but the reason I am looking at it Fibre is because you can put spots of light anywhere easily but not ness. everywhere as it would be with LED.

Paul.

 

[saltynay]

Polymer is the production method it is a naturally occurring or synthetic compound consisting of large molecules made up of a linked series of repeated simple monomers. Polystyrene or Polyester are the plastics with polystyrene made up from the styrene monomer and polyester made from chains of esters. Being a polymer doesn't give it physical attributes its the individual monomers and their chemical composition which determines the way they interact with each other which then relates to their physical properties and uses.