[scubadude]

I have heard blue and i have heard red, is there a proper spectrum for a moon light I was thinking a 25 watt colored bulb for my 220g they are like 2 bucks ne1 have pics and/or specs on their tanks of their moonlight tanks?

[Ninong]

Red is totally out of the question as a moonlight. For one thing, the animals wouldn't even realize it was on. It's only good for human beings to look at the tank at night without alerting the animals.

The proper color for a moonlight is blue. My fixture has a 25w blue incandescent moonlight in the center. For your size tank, you should use two 25w blue incandescent bulbs evenly spaced to cover the tank. Or you could spring for a couple of these Aquamoonlights from AB-Aqualine ( www.ab-aqualine.de ):


Aquamoonlight is a special lamp with only a minimum light intensity for night illumination of aquaria. It allows watching animals that are active at night. For the animals it reduces stress and shock during the dark hours. Moonlight controls the growth and reproduction of many corals. aquamoonlight has 2 special LED´s, and is operated with low voltage.

Ninong

P.S. -- One advantage of using the cheapy 25w blue incandescent bulbs is that they can be computer dimmed with a Neptune Systems Aquacontroller to simulate the phases of the moon. Their computer will also simulate moonrise and moonset by having the bulbs come on and go off at the appropriate times.

[scubadude]

Thats what I thought, but a guy from a rather knowledgeable LFS told me RED and I told him I thought it was blue. Now that I think about it im curious now as to where I should mount 2 moonlights? I would think both of them fairly close together to stimulate one moon? back center? As for now I will be putting them on a cheap timer but maybe eventually I will put them on a controller that controls all the lights. I have heard that the controllers have different seasonal/area settings I wonder if there is some info on the web that has these settings for different zones? I think that is in one of my new books somewhere though

[Ninong]

Originally posted by scubadude:

Thats what I thought, but a guy from a rather knowledgeable LFS told me RED

That's funny! At least he remembered that "red" and "night" go together, just didn't understand why.

Now that I think about it im curious now as to where I should mount 2 moonlights? I would think both of them fairly close together to stimulate one moon?

No. That's not the way you should do it. What you would end up with if you did it that way would be that your animals in the center of the tank would think the moon was too bright and your animals at the ends of the tank would think that the moon was too dim. If your tank was 4-ft long, or less, you could get by with a single 25w blue incandescent bulb... but your tank is much larger than that, so you need two separtate bulbs evenly spaced across the length of the tank. Ideally you would want them centered front-to-back, but you could get away with just placing them at the rear if necessary, as long as your illumination is evenly spread out across your entire tank... which is what you want to achieve.

As for now I will be putting them on a cheap timer but maybe eventually I will put them on a controller that controls all the lights. I have heard that the controllers have different seasonal/area settings I wonder if there is some info on the web that has these settings for different zones?

The superduper Giesemann System 260 fixtures are completely computer controlled to the extent that they automatically control the moonlight intensity and rise & set times. They are superduper expensive, too.

There are two ways to go here. You can simply get a couple of 25w blue incandescent bulbs and connect them to a cheapy timer which simply runs them for the same number of hours per night without varying the intensity or you can get a Neptune Systems Aquacontroller that can be set to vary the intensity to duplicate the natural intensity of the different phases of the moon. I believe the Aquacontroller can be set to adjust for moonrise and moonset, too, but I'm not absolutely certain about that. Ask SPASSE, he has one. You might ask him if they can be set for lattitude and longitude, too. I believe they can, but I'm not certain. That way, once you input the lattitude and longitude, of say the GBR, your controller would adjust everything in your tank to match that natural environment: seasonal changes in the temperature of the tank's water, seasonal changes in the length of time the metal halides are on, daily changes in your moonlight, etc. Of course, this means that your moonlights would sometimes be on in the middle of the day just like the real moon. I think the Aquacontroller can do all of that stuff, but I'm not 100% sure because I don't have one yet... but I'll probably get one as soon as my tank is set up. I know for a fact that there are some German controllers that have those capabilities. I do not believe that the Octopus controllers are capable of adjusting moonlight intensity.

Ninong

P.S. -- I did a search and came up with this pretty good explanation of what the Aquacontroller can do: http://www.smarthome.com/6116.html