Aquarium LED Lighting

Firstly, do you know how to wire up LEDs in series / parallel strings with aresistors to a DC source and calculate the resistor value ( and wattage ) for the voltage of the DC and required current for the LED ? If not - please repost in sci.electronics.basics.

To get the required lighting level you will have to experiment. LEDs vary widely in brightness / efficiency. Not surprisingly, the more expensive are usually brighter for a given current.

Graham

due to the hugely increased level of spam please make the obvious adjustment to my email address

On a sunny day (Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:32:20 +0100) it happened "MC" wrote in :

Youmay want to use LED strips, these ones have LEDs that each have a red, green, and blue emittor inside: ftp://panteltje.com/pub/col_pic/RGB_LED_strip_img0906.jpg

Runs on 12 V, you can make any color you want by adjusting the voltage on the 3 pins. There also exist color controllers for those strips. I got my strips here:

One strip has about 270 mA at when full on, you can chain them together. Made the controller myself:

Those poor fish. They will be, like, staring at the sun and suffering constant migrane headaches!

Hope you turn them LEDs off at night to let them sleep.

(how long do fish sleep?)

They sell a complete setup for something similar at Ikea. 4 strips, controller, interconnecting cables for about $40

few

ring

EDs

use

lse

I love keeping fish, at the moment it's only guppies. Dwarf South American Cichlids are my favorite. I think of lighting as being mostly about keeping the plants healthy and growing. (To keep the aquarium balanced you need to remove plant matter at the same rate you add fish food.) I don=92t know how LEDs stack up in this regard (matching the plants spectral needs). Last time I looked there were lots of fish hobbyist web sites. I=92ll bet at least one of them has tried LEDs. I use fluorescent lights. I put as many as I can fit on top of my tank. Direct sunlight is 1kW/m^2 and that sets an upper limit. (But it=92s hard to match) My favorite aquarium book is =93Dynamic Aquaria=94 by Adey.

Have fun experimenting, George H.

...

There is probably at least one related active USENET group that might be a good place for an initial reaction, or to get references to any experiences.

It does sound like an experiment and a good reason to post in a fish group. Later, he can let them know if the fishes thrived, and if not, how long they lived.

Or post in a cannabis growing NG. I hear LED lighting is becoming popular

On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:07:16 -0700, George Herold wrote: ...

Is this the dawning of the Age of Aquaria? ;-)

Cheers! Rich