DIY solar powered moonlight

[funkman262]

Thanks for the posts der_wille_zur_macht. I went with the solar panel not necessarily for cost savings but for simplicity. Like I said, I'm no electrician and don't want to be messing with resistors and circuit boards. Maybe after I study up on electronics a bit more I'll build up the nerve to do something like that. Honestly though, after sanding down the LED and getting a nice spread over the tank, I probably won't mess with it any further.

How it looked before:

And now:

 

[bassplaya12]

^^that actually looks pretty damn good. Maybe I'll just buy two, change one to blue, and one to UV, then put a diffuser under them both, should mix and spread the light great! I feel like it'll be easier to do than to wire my own circuit, even though I build guitar effects, I like simplicity the best

 

[Dragonist]

Can you show how you sanded you led down? A co-worker of mine gave me a led panel with 225 blue leds for free. Makes my coral Look beautiful. But I will like to possibly get more spread from the side leds.

picture of it

 

[funkman262]

lol I just wiped the LED over my 400 grit sandpaper until it had flattened. Nothing special. I don't know if I'd want to do that on such a nice fixture like that though. That looks awesome.

 

[Dragonist]

Ok thanks for the fast reply...I want to just do the a couple side leds to increase the spread of the blue in my 125

 

[pskelton]

What does a UV spectrum LED provide in a reef tank?

 

[funkman262]

The UV induces certain color growth in various corals as a defense mechanism.

 

[Dragonist]

I'm interested in the look of uv leds on corals....the blue pops colors my orange montipora (looks kinda red under the blue) my zoas are popping and glove polyps)

 

[funkman262]

From what I understand, the UV doesn't just make existing colors "pop" like the blue lights but it actually causes the corals to develop colors that it otherwise wouldn't have. I may add several UV lights onto my heatsink and just wire them up to their own buckpuck. Not much is known on this topic though. Some claim it's UV-A that corals need (and I think that's the wavelength that all/most UV LEDs are using) and others claim that it's the UV-B that corals require. I'm hoping someone eventually investigates this further.