LED xmas lights

[Tonester_man]

will LED xmas lights work for a small tank?

[BeanAnimal]

As moonlights yes, to support coral growth, no.

[johnnyblaze313]

im thinking about throwing a couple hundred on a board and see if it will work for a fish only tank. anyone attempted this yet or have some lying around they can try, i cant find them locally anywhere prolly gonna have to order online

[Cramz07]

I was so going to buy some blue ones for moonlights but the wife looked at me like i was stupid and said it would just make the tank look cheezy....

[johnnyblaze313]

i think for moon lights they would work. Hold a led flash light or a cell phone with a good size screen over your tank when the lights are off its pretty bright.

[DMBillies]

I tried lighting a 36" x 18" frag tank (maybe 8" deep) with LED christmas lights and it was a miserable failure. I used 4 strings of lights with 40 on each string if I remember. This left about 1" spacing around each light. If you get them closer together you might do better, but I would consider what I did a miserable failure. They look bright, but when I put them over the tank they didn't even hold a candle to the PC's I had on there.

[BeanAnimal]

They are made with standard output 3mm or 5mm LEDs that are 30 year old technology. They are about as efficient as an incadescent light bulb and have a very low output. You would need a few thousand of them and they would consume more power than a T5 or MH lamp (by far). The spectrum will not be correct either.

If you want to DIY an LED setup you will need high output current generation Luxeon, Soeul or Cree devices and a suitable heatsink substrate to wick away the heat and a suitable current source to drive them with.

Bean

[turbo21]

there are also different types of led christmas lights, they have the button style which has an internal reflector that shines the light straight out, the lights that look like standard mini lights do not direct the light, on a side note you can check out the christmas lights i have on my house

www.freewebs.com/oholylights

bob

[johnnyblaze313]

how about somthing like this , or led rope light

[BeanAnimal]

None of them are going be suitable for anything more than moon lights

The light bars are moving in the right direction but are still not anywhere near strong enough.

The currently shipping versions SOLARIS and AI fxitures use bleeding edge LEDs that are barely bright enough and efficient enough to make the products viable. If you use the the same LEDs you can also build a suitable fixture.

[Paul_PSU]

I used them on my house for Christmas and when I lit them up, they looked like crap. I took them down and put the old ones up. So, I'm not sure they are even good for Christmas lights.

Paul

[BeanAnimal]

Your not the folks who had the neighbors filing complaints are you bob?

[turbo21]

no complaints, we were the house on every news station though. our light are computer animated and controlled to music, we were a finalist in a national competition.

bob

[BeanAnimal]

I remember seeing it on the news One of the houses (they had less lights than you) was cited for violating noise ordinances but I can't remember where it was... maybe shadyside or squirrel hill?

[lloydkeller]

for moon lights ok, but it would be a great way to store them instead in my lousy garage in the way

[BeanAnimal]

How do you explain to the fish that there is no moon between november and january?

[REEFKEEPA]

Glad to see you have not moved on BA.....
I need some LED's for moonlights but have reservations about those cheesy sockets the Xmas lights have.

[ARIANNA]

My Christmas Led light moonlights burned out in 3 months and they were 14 inches away from the water Good luck

[Tang Salad]

Originally posted by BeanAnimal
How do you explain to the fish that there is no moon between november and january?

[turbo21]

Originally posted by REEFKEEPA
Glad to see you have not moved on BA.....
I need some LED's for moonlights but have reservations about those cheesy sockets the Xmas lights have.

alot of the newer led xmas lights have sealed sockets (the bulbs are not replaceable

bob