Moon Light questions

[reaper10]

I am in the middle of a DIY project, a moonlight

At present I am using 1, 1 watt 455nM Royal Blue Luxeon Star LED (see attachment), with a manual dimmer.

The Royal Blue Luxeon Star LED has no optics, approximately 120° beam angle, the configuration of my hood only allows me to mount the led 6 inches from the surface of the water, so consequently only lights up one third of my 100 gal reef, so I am thinking about expanding to 3 led's.

My questions are,

1. how much moon lighting is needed for a 100 gal reef. 72x18x18?

2. Does the lighting need to be in the UV spectrum or is this just for the "WOW" effect when people see the Elegant Coral glowing in the dark? If not what would be a good color.

3. Should the moon light be synchronized with the moon cycle in my local area so it is in sync. with the moons gravitational pull?
A 28 day cycle in which the light starts out off to simulate the new moon and 14 increments to full light and 14 increments back.

This project can get out of control, very easy, adding parameters.

4. One thing that I have noticed are my corals under the moon light do not close during the night, is this good for the corals not having any rest time?


Thanks,

Reaper10
:confused:

[rpgraff]

This is not a highly educated reply, basically my intuition...........

As far as how much "moon lighting"??? Not much ..LOL.. A few watts should be enough.

I would think a light in the blue spectrum would be appropriate. Moon light is just like sunlight in that the longer wavelengths are absorbed by the water quickly. The difference being that Moon light has much less intensity. I am guessing that the corals are used to being basked in "blue" moon light.

I don't have a clue about synching the lighting cycle with your local gravitational pull. Has anyone done a study on that?????? There are controllers out on the market that will simulate a moon cycle for you, even seasonal changes.

I wouldn't worry about your corals being open at night under the moon light, it is my understanding they do the same thing on a natural reef. Night time is typically when the reefs are "washed" over with all sorts of planctionic life and its is a conditioned feeding response.

[kaiyokanman28]

I have 3 aqua-colored LEDs on my own hood. A relatively decent picture of them is in my gallery. I have them set up so that they're pretty much on all the time (Their light gets drowned out by the PCs during the photo cycle). But I have a switch on the back of my hood that allows me to either put 10mA or 20mA through them. The LEDs are rated for 30mA, but I didn't think I needed THAT much light for my 46g.

As for cycling them in phase with the lunar cycle. I would think that pretty much strictly depends on whether you're trying to breed certain types of corals that their breeding cycle is dependent upon the lunar cycle.

For myself, I just wanted a way to dimly illuminate my tank at night so I could see some of the nocturnal life and create glimmer lines...purely for visual appeal.

On my tank, 3 LEDs is plenty. I don't have anything in the tank yet in the way of live rock or corals yet as I just got it running earlier this week, and the water's still cloudy from adding my Southdown sand, but the LEDs certainly give a nice basking of low level light to the entire tank, and that's with them pointed up into the reflector to eliminate that spotlight effect.

About my only beef is that the aqua-colored LEDs tend to have more green color than blue color to them, but I felt that white and blue LEDs were too much on the extreme of the scale for what I was looking for.

As for being in the UV spectrum, that's purely up to you and just for visual appeal. You're not going to harm the corals with UV radiation that small, but you're not going to get a natural moonlight look either.

Hope that helps just a little bit...:)

Cheers!

Andy :wildone: