LED moonlights?

[joker577]

Has anyone done a custom LED moonlight type system alongside your metal halides for at night? I was thinking about getting a small 2 bulb PC type system at the hardware store and maybe attaching LEDs but to see someone already've done it would be nice :eek2:

 

[Cwazy Clown]

well.... just find 35mm blue LEDs from radio shack. then find an old cellphone you no longer plan on using and take the charger from that and rig it to your LEDs. If you need help with the math to determine how bright you want your moonlights, its just V=IR, but LMK if anything is unclear to you.

 

[pblutang]

I'm going to try this out. Sounds pretty simple.

 

[eww]

We have T5's but the concept is the same. We used these lights from ebay for some white accent lights along with the Icecap blue retro moonlights.

http://stores.ebay.com/5STARSCOMPUT...18QQ_sidZ307405048QQ_trksidZp4634Q2ec0Q2em322

We got two of the 9 LED white units and hooked them up with a 12 ACDC adapter. I would imagine the blues would work just as well. We thought we may want to order more than two but now that they are hooked up they are very bright and penetrate all the way to the substrate 30" down with a nice shimmer. Two was plenty for our 36" wide tank. They are mounted on little acrylic brackets that I made and set about 4" above the water surface. I suggest just getting the ACDC adapter from these people as well because they are not very easy to find in the marketplace anymore. Everything is designed now to plug into your car and convert 12v to 120v. We found some adjustable voltage units at Vetco (www.vetco.net) in Bellevue at $10 each that would allow you to dim them by adjusting the voltage output.

Here are some pics:

Man the Icecap unit is bright. We wish it was dimmable but they don't offer a dimming unit and we have not tried plugging them into a wall dimmer yet. We will soon though.

Here is a tank shot with the whites and blues on (kind of a funky angle looking up but we were trying to catch what the lights looked like):

 

[pblutang]

Nice! Thanks for sharing.. All I have on right now are power compacts. 4 65w, 2 are daylight and 2 are actnic. Someone told me t5's would be better than what I have. Everything seems to be growing with my pc's so far. I'd like to get LED's for the moonlight effect.

 

[eww]

I have also confirmed with the eBay supplier that the blue LED's they offer are indeed 470nm units so they are the right color for our application as well as being dirt cheap .

We have just gotten started in the hobby so I can't speak whether PC or T5 are better but I'm sure someone else can chime in on that at some point.

 

[joker577]

470nm... real moonlight color?

 

[eww]

That's the color of the moonlights everyone sells.

 

[Faciosity]

Just got one of these today and it's awesome! Took 3 weeks for it to get here because it's Chinese, but for $10 and free shipping you can't beat it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/1x-24-LED-Blue-...tem&pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item335d06215e

 

[khaosinc]

In one of my bored project moods, I picked these up, they are 21 led 'spotlights' (I think the box of 12 was like $60 on ebay) that have the standard lightbulb screw in (L26 I think) and put them in a $5 wallmart outdoor light fixture. Little bright for smaller tanks, but deep or wide ones would be perfect.

My cheapo camera doesn't do blue well, but the effect is perfect in a larger tank. I have 12 over my 10x4' 30" deep tank and moonlight shimmer is amazing.

 

[joker577]

Well that sounds like it would be perfect... I plan on having my nova fixture about 12" off of the tank, if I rigged it on there do you think that it wouldn't be too bright over the 20" tank?

 

[Xtremedave67]

Ewww I ended up ordering a set of those LED's lunar blue's. came within 3 days. happened I had a spare AC plug. and it fit into the rail my lighting legs mount into just like they designed it just for that.
I was so excited last night waiting for dark LOL wow for $6.50 delivered they look fantastic

 

[eww]

Glad to hear it Dave. I thought they were quite the deal too and our white ones add a nice transition effect from the bright lights to the blue's.

 

[khaosinc]

you would have to try. I have mine 20" off the top of a 30" deep tank. If you are near Bellingham, I could unscrew on and you could try it.

 

[Krish]

Here's what I did in my old 38 gal cube. I got some acrylic, made some strips and then used some blue Viper leds (alarm system's leds) we had lying around to make a set. Then I just used a power supply from radio shack to run them. Let me grab a few pics.

 

[Krish]

Here they are. Hope it sparks a few ideas.



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[ac7av]

I got one of the longer strips, I think it was 120 led’s. The power supply it came with blew up one minute after plugging it in. Be careful with that over seas stuff. The led I got work fine with an actually power supply but those small switching power supply wall wart plugs are just not built very well. No heat dissipation capabilities at all so when you start to run them up close to there specifications they just cant handle it.

 

[joker577]

Well, after all my research I ended up buying a white and blue lunar link/light, I went to Lowe's and bought a 90 degree piece of flat metal and a long piece of metal with screw holes in it, I'm going to bend the metal in a vice at work, attach it to the giesemann with heavy duty velcro, then zip tie the lunar link to the metal/ screw it in... sounds like a pretty solid plan. Does anyone want pics of this build? lol

 

[pewpewlazerbeam]

Joker, the lunar link setup is awesome and very easy to mod for your system. Wise choice

 

[pewpewlazerbeam]

I actually just cut a piece of glass that spanned the length of the tank about 1" wide and siliconed the lunar links to the top side of it. Worked great