DIY LED Moonlight (pic heavy)

[Cgy_Betta_Guy]

Figured I would unveil something I did recently that actually looks pretty neat. It has actually been in the works since last October but I finally got this mounted on my canopies and it looks good so I thought I would share with everyone on here in case anyone wanted to use my idea. I figure it would look great on both salt and fresh water tanks.

Some of you may have seen the little LED light strip that I made for my Fluval Edge tank from another thread I started a while back. That was made with the white version of the light strips I have used for these 2 projects.

LED moonlighting Light strip version 1 Blue

I wanted to get a nice blue LED moonlight for my tanks and after the failure of a couple of my Hydor Ario products after very short periods of use (I might have to do a product review). I definitely wanted to find a better alternative and maybe innovate a little. I frequent a site on the net that sells all sorts of cheap goodies out of Hong Kong and I saw these on there one day and figured they would be perfect for my needs. I have ordered lots of things from them and it does take a few weeks for things to arrive as it is coming from overseas but shipping is free and thus far I have had no issues with customs. All prices on the site are in USD. I know what everyone is thinking... made in china stuff is crap but cheap is good in my opinion so I am not going to complain.

Here are the items that I used.

Blue only LED automotive lightstrip that is water proof. Basically a flexible strip with surface mount LEDs and components soldered onto it and wrapped in a vinyl coating. The ends are sealed so no water penetration can occur.

and a closer look at the LED emitters

it has 2 leads that need to be connected to a 12V power source

12V power source

[Cgy_Betta_Guy]

Its pretty easy to connect the 2 items:

cutting the end off the power adaptor (there is another alternative that you will see in version 2).

The LED strip itself can be cut to length if needed... they are broken into groups of 3 LEDs. Basically cut at where the scissors are shown on the strip and you have another length that you can attach wires to. Cutting would require sealing the end with silicon to make it water proof again. In my case I needed to take 3 groups in order for it to fit under my canopy or 9 emitters in total.

with the connector from the adapter cut off its a simple task to solder the ends together. This was just a quick test of the light strip so I just wrapped the wires together for now. LED lights will only work in 1 direction so you need to make sure its wired correctly or you will get no light.

This is what ya get

and with the lights off it looks pretty bright

[Cgy_Betta_Guy]

test mounting in my 58 Gallon tank where I just tied it onto the fluorescent tube just to see what it would look like before mounting it permanently on my canopy using silicon.

I decided to do something different in my 58 gallon so decided to put this into my 31 Gallon tank. Just mounted it with some silicon and its positioned in front of the frontmost light tube and just behind the lid door.

in my case I decided that I wanted to protect the wiring from getting water on them from condensation or fish splashing. Water tends to degrade things and since the plastics on the wiring for this LED are highly unlikely to be of very good quality I threaded the wiring through a length of silicon air tubing, soldered and shrink tubed the connection and siliconed it tight at the base of the light strip. A couple of dollops of silicone to hold the tubing up out of the water and out the back and we are done.

and the finished product!

Here is what I used for the blue version.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.16210

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15989

[Cgy_Betta_Guy]

LED moonlighting Light strip version 2 Multiple colors

After playing around with the blue strip I moved onto using the RGB version of the strip. Its more expensive but figured it would be a bit more versatile. Looks exactly the same as the Blue light strip except it has 4 wires attached, one negative and each of the other three works a specific diode in each of the emitters. Each of these diodes emits either red, green or blue so its important to connect all 3 wires to the power source. It also comes with its own controller (makes the lights flash through different color configurations) but the controller is pretty useless for what I need it for. Some people might want to make a fish night club... I dont. Here is a picture from the Fluval strip.. you can see the 3 dots in each of the circles

In this project I wanted the ability to turn each of the individual diodes in the emitters separately so I needed to attach clicky switches to each of the leads. I also added one to overall power in order to turn the strip on and off completely with one click.

I also decided that instead of cutting the end off the power adaptor and soldering it directly to the leads I would just solder a female connector to the unit instead. This way I can disconnect it easily when I am taking the canopy off the tank or connect it to a replacement adaptor really easily. The power adaptor male connection is on the top, the extra wire with female connector is on the bottom.

and connected to the power adaptor

[Cgy_Betta_Guy]

Like the blue version, this strip was also mounted using silicon and silicon tubing wrapped around the leads from the light strip.

Here is what the finished product looks like in the tank. Each color is achieved by turning on or off the individual lead for the diodes in the light emitters using the clicky switches I attached.

Here is the tank with the stock canopy T8 lights

I can now pick a color but I just use white as shown in this pic.

The other colors

Red

Blue

Green

Turquoise

Yellow

Purple

Here are the parts used for version 2

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.16868

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.15989

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.28980

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5602

[Cgy_Betta_Guy]

The total consumption for the LED light strips using my Kill-O-Watt meter was approximately 0.1 kwh which works out to a penny a day to run the light strip for 10 hours. It comes on 3 hours before and stays on 3 hours after the canopy lights and are also on for a 4 hour period in the middle of when my main lights are on as supplemental lighting to the stock canopy T8 lights. Whether the supplemental lighting actually helps remains to be seen.

Well there it is! Feel free to use the idea in your tanks and I welcome you to post a follow up pic of your moonlight in operation too!

[Cgy_Betta_Guy]

Just an FYI, I just recently got another strip of the white only strip and it came with its own adhesive back.

Oh I should also mention that these strips do seem to emit a faint plastic/vinyl odor for the first little while which I believe is from the vinyl coating heating up from the emitters. The smell seems to have gone away after a couple months though and I dont think there is any toxic effects to the fish since I have had no losses since putting them in.

And some other quick pics of when I had the blue one test mounted in my 58 gallon tank.

my rams were freaking out a bit at the blue light for some reason

decent color through out the tank

plants closed up for the night

[Vallisneria]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing your tutorial.

Do those automotive LED strips com in any lenght?

[Cgy_Betta_Guy]

These light strips are a meter long or 39 -40 inches and can be cut down by groups of 3 emitters on the strip. Anything cut off can also be used for lighting if you attach a power source to them and just need to water proof them again by slapping some silicon on the cuts. Each group of 3 emitters is about 4 inches long.

Edited August 29, 2010 by Cgy_Betta_Guy

[Jaykit]

Great DIY project. Love the results!

[skynoch]

great job I like the looks of all the colors. Do you have a link to this site?

[vince0]

Great Thread!

Do you mind sharing where you purchased these, unless i missed it :P

[Cgy_Betta_Guy]

Thanks. The links to the parts used in both versions are listed at the end of posts 3 and 5.

[BettaVishVish]

cool...thank you for showing us how the end result looks like with different lights.

[skynoch]

Thanks. The links to the parts used in both versions are listed at the end of posts 3 and 5.

Sorry I missed that, I just kept looking at the pictures