How bright for moonlights

[Joe Fish]

I just built a new moonlight fixture with 8 white leds and 8 blue leds controlled with a switch. This way I can turn one or the other off. Do you think they are too bright? I have 8 blue led fixture on my tank, but it's not as bright as my new one. Tell me what you think.

White and blue lights are on

All lights are on

Blue only

White only

 

[CoolWaters]

what kind of LEDs are thos? i bet u 3 high power LEDs will cover the whole tank in blue.

 

[Lotus]

I don't think they're too bright with both on, but you might want to only have the white on occasionally... I just like the look better

 

[Joe Fish]

I really like the blue look, but the white helps brighten everything up some.

They are just regular 3mm LEDs.

 

[Lorna]

looks great!

 

[CoolWaters]

the only thing that suxs about the small LEDs is that the angle is so small and doesnt cover a whole lot of area.

 

[zoalover34]

hey joe, where did u pick those up at? were they pretty cheap and what did u use to wire them up with? looks like somethin id be interested in doin

 

[Joe Fish]

You can sand the dome of the bulb to give it a more spread out angle, but I didn't want to do that. Maybe for my 3rd edition i'll try that. My next one will have dimmers wired in. LEDs are a little tricker to dim and you actually use a timer to turn off/on the lights quicker than the eye can see.

Yes, they were cheap. I got them from HID Kits & Neons - underbody kits, LEDs, cathodes, hid kits.
- Lights were about .50 per LED. I used the 3mm bulbs I think, but you can get bigger ones.
- Resistors were .05 for wiring in parallel. If you wire in serial with a series of 4 lights you don't need a resistor.
- I stripped apart a phone cable and used that. You would use maybe 22 or 24 guage wire.
- switches were $2 a piece
- I had the wood just laying around.
- 12 volt power supply that has enough mA to power the LEDs. Each LED uses 20mA.

 

[zoalover34]

i guess i don't understand how you hooked the switches up and powered it, could you just use a plug for say a camcorder or nintendo and cut the wire mid way and hook it up to the leds after you wire them? and put the switches in the middle or something? im pretty handy in construction just not this part lol..

 

[Joe Fish]

Yeah, you can do that. The power adapter has to be 12 volts though.

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