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Red Lights

CaptFish

Colossal Squid
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So as I continue my search for good way to make a tank red for nocturnal viewing I cam across these:

Fluorescent Colored Light Bulbs
F40T12 fluorescent colored light bulbs 866-637-1530

Red LED screw in light bulb
http://www.bulbamerica.com/osram-s14-led-bulb-with-red-transparent-cover.html

another Red LED screw in
http://www.bulbamerica.com/osram-g19-1w-red-led-bulb.html

this one is LED and multi color you twist it to change colors - these also come in different bulb shapes.
http://www.bulbamerica.com/osram-sylvania-1w-b10-shape-red-led-light-bulb.html

and another mini spot light looking
http://www.bulbamerica.com/silver-1-7w-jdr-1led-medium-base-red-bulb.html

in addition to these they have red LED par bulbs (Like outdoor spot lights)
 
I wish someone would buy one of these T8 fluorescent covers from your first link to see if they work well. I have compacts so the covers won't work but anyone having T8's like in a standard freshwater hood might have a nice solution with these.

Here is another screw in self ballasted fluoresent similar to the one you showed me awhile back that you found at an ACE hardware and I found at Home Depot. As a side note none of the self-ballasted bulbs (that I know of) are recommended for wet environments. There is no safety warning so the reason may be bulb life but it should be noted if you choose to try this kind of fixture over an aquarium.
 
I wonder how much, if any non-red light leaks through red colored lenses? I know that LED's only emit a very narrow band of wave lengths, so essentially they only emit light of a single color, which I think is better than those covers that try to filter out all but the red light. Plus LED's are cooler, and use less energy, and don't diminish over time.
 
Ever so slowly (because of both finances and technology) I plan to replace ALL my lighting with LED because of the heat issues (along with the reduced electricity usage).

Many of the "RED" LED lights (and most other forms of red lighting) are white lights with red filters. Since I use a velum lens cover over the merc tank and they have been night active with this set up, I think a filter works but ensuring all the white light is filtered can be difficult. I painted the sides of the lens for the merc tank to help minimize leakage.
 
In the past I've used a normal fluorescent bulb with red velum taped over it, and it worked fine. And after watching a friend photograph squid with red-filter/LED dive light, I'm pretty sold on that too- so something similar rigged up for an aquarium should work.
 
The big problem I have found with the ones that change color is that after a power outage (or turning them off) you have to reset them to red. Needless to say, you can't use a timer with them.
 
I usually leave my nocturnal red lights on 24/7 as well but we used an aquarium "moon" light bar that had a selection of colors with the default being white (if you could just set the default ...). After a summer of quick power outages from thunderstorms and failing to notice the issue until the octopus started pacing (it was on a diurnal tank at the time) we just discontinued using it.
 
LED's are so confusing now. We have a dome light (actually a couple of them but only one red one) that uses somewhere between 15 and 20 LED lights (I looked at one but can't count them with out disassembling the thing). We used 5 of these (three white and two blue or visa versa) multi-LED dome lights to light our 45 hex (until I got the happy face seat at MACNA and won the new MarineLand LED bar - love it). We use the one multi-lamp red dome on the left side of Tatanka's tank now as a night light. The confusion comes in with the brightness of the newer LED's and how many bulbs it takes to produce the same amount of light. I have no clue.
 
I am with D. I just can not wrap my mind around them. MH's T5's PC's florescent... WAY easier to understand. I think I would rather buy a plug and play set up... at least then I wont have to worry about killing myself in the process. Of course I cant see myself spending 600$ on a new spiffy 24" set up so I will make do. And I thought MH were expensive... geeze.
 
The have changed so much in this last year though. Up until recently, you needed a lot of LED's to get usable light and the reviews were not good. The light from my new fixture visually looks great on the 45 but I am not sure what will grow in it (I am thinking about switching it from a nocturnal ceph tank to a small softies reef and then doing something cephy with my larger tank). So far, I have separated a few polyps from one tank planted those and put in an unhealthy (due to urchin attack) gorgonian. The gorgonian is doing well but some of the polyps have bleached (I am not sure if this is a lighting issue or not though). Little by little I will experiment to see what will be happy there. I would really like to be able to eventually switch everything to LED for both heat and power consumption concerns.
 

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