Black Light as moonlight

[benignoh]

Hi
Ill like to know if i can used a 13w flourescent bulb as a moonlight for my reef tank, if i decide to use them ill be using 2 of them.
Please advice!

[benignoh]

By the way the 13w fluorecent bulb is a black light bulb!

[benignoh]

BUMP

[chrissreef]

i wouldn't, too bright (to the animals) and the "spectrum" might be to close to the actinic spectrum that the animals may never think it's "night" time.

I could be wrong... but wouldn't that suck if you got some crazy alien like algae forming that glowed?

[FranktheTankTx]

Black lights are virtually actinics. They run somewhere in the 300 - 400nm.

To answer your question... I don't know what the effect would be of running these thru the night.

[areze]

Id think a 26w wouldnt be enough to keep corals "awake"

but Ive always had best results when I kept the moonlight off for atleast some of the night.

Id run them from when your lights turn off, till you go to sleep, keep the tank in total darkness till you wake up or the lights come on. IE you should have a good 8 hours where the tank can happily be in total darkness while you sleep.

black light will make your corals glow, but wont do much to light the rest of the tank, might be a nice look, or you might want to get a general view of the tank which is why blue LEDs are popular, they mix it.