LED Night Lights?

[GuZZiZZiT]

Isn't the goal of moonlighting to emulate natural night lighting, and not so you can view the fish? Just seems some of the setups are way brighter than natural moon lighting would ever be.

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Well, yeah the main reasone alot of people use moonlights on SW and reef tanks is to sinulate night time conditions and not for viewing fish. I'm just hoping to add a little light to my tank so i can watch my inhabitants when i get hom from work at 2 AM. right now the only way i see them is to turn the room lights real low so they come out of there hideing spots.

 

[loaches r cool]

definitely blue, because it looks like moonlight and is more natural.

Last I looked at the moon it was white. Infact the moon does a very good job of reflecting sunlight without any shift of color from true sunlight. Blue is just all that penetrates into deep marine water, but at the depths of where our freshwater plants a fish occupy its mostly still white.

For freshwater aquariums, moonlights are basically just a personal preference. I am trying yellow leds for my next projects, since both species of fish share yellow coloring. I also have some blue cold cathode lights I have yet to try on my community planted tank. I did successfully burn up all my diy blue moonlights (rather embarassing for an engineer like myself :duh: ) because of a stupid cheapie unregulated wall adapter.

 

[WeeNe858]

since they are led lights they have low wattage as for the brightness... you can always adjust it with the depth from you tank top to the light unit...


white :]

 

[lilly]

I went with two blue, they are very tiny. I wanted subtle. The white was too bright for me. They rest on top of the glass. I had to have two because I have a center support, otherwise, one would have been enough.

Here is a photo-

 

[BioFilter]

All that said - have you thought about black lighting? From what I understand, fish are like us and barely register blacklight on their visible spectrum. I'm considering doing this in my 150, but I built everything myself and it would be as simple as moving one fixture 6 inches one way or the other and adding another.

I tried black lighting before and it made the water look very cloudy. It looked terrible. The water was clean and clear under regular light, cloudy under black light. I unhooked it.

 

[severum mama]

I haven't figured out a way to permanently install it yet, so I slip it under my reflector at night.

The Current USA lunar lights are meant to be mounted inside a canopy, so there isn't really a great way to install them if you don't have one.

Should i go with Red, Blue or white colored lights?

I like the blue ones. I have blue lunar lights on my 55 gallon and they look great. I'd recommend using one lunar light for every 2 feet of your tank, so assuming your 125 is a 6 footer, you'd be happier with 3 instead of 2. Just get one lunar light and two lunar links; the lunar links plug right in to the lunar light. This allows the light and links to all be powered from one plug. Hope that makes sense.

 

[tjBlotto]

My angelfish love the white moonlight.

 

[Daudzegier]

I use sixteen bulbs over my freinds 55 gallon. A set of two of red and two of blue aranged in a four cluster fixture. I had to custom make the lighting fixture. It's cool, because it is predominatly blue, but it adds a nice purple glow - not overpowering though. Realy looks like moonlight, i guess becuase red and blue are on opposite ends of the color spectrum, it "tricks" you into thinking you have a full spectrum of moonlight. One color by itself just seems wierd.

 

[BucJason]

I went with two blue, they are very tiny. I wanted subtle. The white was too bright for me. They rest on top of the glass. I had to have two because I have a center support, otherwise, one would have been enough.

Here is a photo-

this picture sure looks like moonlight to me.....

white just looks like daylight in an aquarium, and other colors unnatural. But i guess it's personal preference.

 

[loaches r cool]

BTW, I know if you buy the commercial available moonlights you are stuck with a few choices. But for diy'ers you can get just about any angle or brightness of any color. What I mean is one color doesnt have to be brighter than the other - any color can be any brightness.

And BTW, for all you's that havent looked up at night lately, this is what the moon looks like (taken with my digital point n shoot - no photo editing except size):

Or even sometimes a little deeper orange like this (again, no editing):

Not like this (edited to look like the 'natural blue moonlight' you guys keep talking about):

Blue light(and not much any other color), aka Actinic, is what you get in the ocean in deep water since the shorter wavelengths penetrate much more so than the longer wavelengths of light. If you trying to simulate a reef tank then it is somewhat realistic, but again in a shallow freshwater environment this is not natural at all.

Also, I should note that the human vision does become more sensative to blue at night. Meaning blue light seems brighter to us and more things appear slightly bluer than they would otherwise. Our daytime 'photopic vision' has a peak sensativity of about 555nm (green) whereas during night, our 'scotopic vision' then has a peak at 507nm (aqua blue/green).