Christmas Lights

[tiffrobbins]

Okay, just in an effort to think outside of the box... What would be the problems with using christmas light to light a tank? Let me know if you have any input.

 

[kaserpick]

Not much light?

 

[tiffrobbins]

The string I have says its 45 watts. It will light up a whole room. I was just thinking of lighting like a 1 gal pico with it.

 

[Slakker]

Wrong color spectrum?
Heat?
Inconsistent?

 

[Rosseau]

Yeah. Likely your christmas lights are incandescents. These are pretty much the worst light bulbs we could have invented. They use a lot of power inefficiently.

This means, you'll have a lot of unwanted heat.

Even worse, likely the light produced won't be within the useful range for your corals.

If you had other lights to supplement, then I see no problem with it (other than heat).

 

[[17]shawn[17]]

do u mean the led christmas lights? i had the same idea

 

[Slakker]

the LED christmas lights wouldn't be too terrible, but I'm still not sure it's the right color spectrum for photosynthesizing.

Would be an interesting experiment though.

 

[nynex]

The problem with the LED christmas lights are that they are most likely not enough
mcd (candlelight) for what you want. Most likely they are under 5000 mcd's each.
Even the LEDs used for moonlights are typically 6000mcds each.

You would be better buying the proper LEDs and building your own setup. I just
ordered a bulk of the super bright white 10mm LEDs that are 140,000 mcds each
and super bright blue LEDs that are 60,000 mcd's each.

anyway...good luck...

 

[KUDA]

I used a strip of 30 blue led's for moonlights on my tank. After about 3-4 months, they died down and the parts directly beneath the bulbs rusted. I guess they couldn't take the salt water.