... are a good idea. They cover for the fact that beyond the basics, even an advanced reefer cannot know the concentration of the huge number of things dissolved in seawater.
Just thought I'd share my DIY moonlight experience in with mod's I made to my 4 foot lighthood.
I used a standard 150 mm blue neon light purchased from the computer section of Dick Smith Electronics. I basically cut the PC-plug off the end of the red/black inverter cable and wired this up to a 500mA 12V DC to AC trasnformer.
Blue neon light from Dick Smith Electronics.
The transformer is simply plugged into a analogue timer (front right powerboard socket). The timer switches the moonlight on 15 mins prior to T5's turning off (8:15pm) in the evening, and off 15 mins post the T5's turning on (7:30am) in the morning.
Neon light transformer plugged into analogue timer.
In fact I considered the little neon tube to be too bright (in dark room) so I eventaully wrapped a layer of tan coloured shade cloth around the tube which In My Opinion is a little more realistic of moonlight on the reef. Below is a 2 second exposure taken with my el' cheapo kodak camera which captures close to what I see standing ~3 meters away from the tank with all other lights in the flat turned off.
Appearance of tank with blue neon light on.
Whilst the neon tube doesn't quite equate to a point source (tube length x 5) I still get a lot of flickering across the bottom! Obviously the open areas of the tank appear brighter, and if you sit nearer to the glass, and give your eyes a few minutes to adjust I can see most everything other than directly into the caves. Hope this post helps someone!
Blue neon light installed into lighting hood.
Comments
use of lower voltage Written by
on 2006-05-22 16:56:01I installed as per your instruction but used a multi-voltage transformer and have set it the lowest setting (2 volts I think). The resultant light generated from the tubes compared to moonlight is extraordinary.
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