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Octopus Lighting

blackz151

Cuttlefish
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Jul 18, 2012
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This is my first post but Ive been trolling for days. Great info all around I cant get enough of it. My question is I'm in the process of building a tank for an octopus 55 gal. My question is lighting? Im going to build my own led light. I'm in the process of picking out the colors of the leds and I just wanted to run it past people that know what there doing to make sure im on the same page. It was going to be about 36 leds or so. This is just a ruff setup. I was thinking about 18 royal blue leds. And about 9 white leds. All set at a pretty dim intensity. Then make up the other 9 with a red led for nighttime use. I just want to make sure that its enough but not to much . Thanks for all the help and Im looking foward to getting this rocking and rollin'
 
Hmmm. If the LED setup you are describing is about the brightness of a regular fish tank lights like T5s or compact florescent. Then it's perfect. at night you do not want the tank to be too bright but for simulated daytime regular Tank lighting is fine. For nocturnal Octos most people just use dim red lights 24/7. Not many of us, if any, have much experience with using LEDs. I would like to switch my tanks LED.
 
Thanks! And thank you for the info. All the colors are going to be dim-able so I can match a normal t-5. I was just worried about it being to much light. But if it can match a normal lighting system them its all good to go.
 
:welcome: to TONMO!
Many of us have interest in LED setups and it would be great if you would take pictures along the way as you build out the fixture and post them to our tank talk thread.
 
blackz151;191224 said:
This is my first post but Ive been trolling for days. Great info all around I cant get enough of it. My question is I'm in the process of building a tank for an octopus 55 gal. My question is lighting? Im going to build my own led light. I'm in the process of picking out the colors of the leds and I just wanted to run it past people that know what there doing to make sure im on the same page. It was going to be about 36 leds or so. This is just a ruff setup. I was thinking about 18 royal blue leds. And about 9 white nice led lights leds. All set at a pretty dim intensity. Then make up the other 9 with a red led for nighttime use. I just want to make sure that its enough but not to much . Thanks for all the help and Im looking foward to getting this rocking and rollin'


You can make use of led lights. They are quiet good for using in aquariums and does not cause any disturbance to these species
 
i have led lighting on all my tanks including two octo tanks for the last three weaks any way and the octos don't seem to mind the bright light so far even with the lights turned up high enuf to grow sps and mangroves.
one of them is in a 72 bow front with 48 led's including cool white,420nm royal blue,460nm blue,660nm red,and green. unfortunetly i didn't plan the leds for octos so my red's are on the same string as the blues and greens so they can't be run alone but i plan to seperate them and run them off a small moonlight driver.
i think 36 led's would be plenty for a 55 and even capable of growing some sps if you wanted since your going dimable i would keep your blues on a seperate string so you can run them alone for night lights, i gradualy fade my whites down first then the blues fade off a few hours later. if you use good led's you won't need 9 reds to fill a 55, i'd go with 4or5 tops, don't forget to much red will give you alot of algie growth. also i would use a mix of cool and neautral whites to give a little broader spectrum with more yellos and greens.
if it wer me i would build it like this
driver 1 meanwell eln6048p- 16 cree xte 420 royal blue
driver 2 meanwell eln6048p- 6 cool white-3 neutral white cree xpg-2 cree xpg 460 blue
driver 3 dimable nano driver from rapidled- 4 cree 660 reds
driver 4 dimable nano driver.......- 6 uv led's not shure of brand
controler-boost led typhoon adrino controler- 4 channel controler with seperate timer,max intensity level and fade in/out times for each channel can run 2 driver per channel, i have 2 of these now and i love them, theyr not prety but theyr only 50 bucks
i'm not shure if the nano drivers work with the typhoon controler but i think they will
no lenses should be neessary for the led's and you will get better color mixing without them.
this is the top of my 72 before i added the uv's the led's are mounted on 1inch c-channel i made from square tubing i split on the table saw but 3/4 c-channel works just as well. if i wer to build this one again i would mount the c-channel closer togeather becouse their is a little bit of spotlighting(bright spots and colors not mixing well) as it is now and it gets realy bad if i add the 80* lenses.
i have bought allmost all of my building suplys from rapid led and highly recomend them
 

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this is the top for my 92 corner bow. the hole in the middle inishaly held a 250w halide but i replaced it with a led panel with 16rb 11 cool whites and 3 neatrual whites the outer ring has 16 rb and 12 cool whites and 2 warm whites mounted on solid aluminum plate. the inside of the hood is compleetly lined with miror polished aluminum sheet so the color mixing is excelent. the acrylic peices used to hold atinic power compacts when i originaly built the hood.
 

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gpx, Thanks for the detailed post! I have copied your excellent posts to the Tank Talk froum under the title DIY LED lighting for topic reference. If you post more on the topic or if anyone has questions, please use the above link so that the discussion will be most easily found in the future :wink:.

Also, if you have a link to your recommended supplier, please include it. Unlike many forums, links are allowed (encouraged) as long as they are on topic and not for self gain.
 
Cyron (https://www.cyron.com/) makes LED lights that are bars that come with mounts I used them to light some jewelry cases for my business they are so light weight a little glass glue to the mounts and they stay just fine. They also have controllers that come with them that allow you to change the color as well and my particular units can be put up to speakers and will change to the music, although I would not suggest it as your octo might get epilepsy or something. But they do give you the option to go white during the day and red for night vieweing. I was thinking of some for my octo tank. Only problem is, they have a ton of wiring that has to be dealt with.

One last thing... Lowes sells a pack of these with controllers AC converters and 4 5inch bar lights. Just FYI
I personally chose to order the controllers and AC adapters offline and bought the 7 or 9 in (cant remember which) which are also sold at lowes typically.
 
Keep in mind that you are dealing with moving saltwater so protection against even a little splash is essential (one LED light down with burn marks reiterated that point recently with a unit made for hydroponics)
 
DWhatley;194167 said:
Keep in mind that you are dealing with moving saltwater so protection against even a little splash is essential (one LED light down with burn marks reiterated that point recently with a unit made for hydroponics)

Very true. Luckily cyron's lights come with a protective plastic housing around them. They are on a bar inside a plastic tube. I have yet to subject them to an aquarium setting but they seem durable enough to handle the task.
 

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