Full spectrum lighting

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CooperDragon

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That's for the report. That sounds like a really great setup. I like have you have it following a more natural daytime cycle vs just on/off. How does the LED light compare to outdoor light? Does it appear adjusted at all to showcase underwater scenery vs dry scenery? If it looks like natural sunlight it sounds like a great addition and a pretty good value at that price.
 

charmander16

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What they call full spectrum and orange both look good. Full spectrum is basically all colors on orange leaves off the blue LEDs (but still has blue from the white LEDs). Basically full spectrum looks bright white (but not bluish like many "white" LEDs and florescents do) and "orange" has the quality of an incandescent light.

Their "moonlight" is too bright for our purposes. It's clearly more for a fish tank, but it doesn't matter because you can dim it down and save it as your own color. What I'm not clear on is with the Pro if you can set the night timer to run a specific color or if it just runs their moonlight (which would be too bright).

As far as size, I'd say that the 24" is just right for my viv, but I'm not sure if it would be more than enough for a typical 4X2X2. For a 4X2X2 if you only have 1 basking bulb and a 24" or 36" UVB, either the 18" or 24" are potential options, but I wouldn't go over 24". However remember, you can dim the light so don't worry about it being too bright.

I think this is something to really consider for anyone with a viv that doesn't get much natural light and is currently only running 2 lights.
 

charmander16

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Update on the exact details of how the timing, etc. works for the Satellite + LEDs. This is a little annoying because it's so close to exactly what's needed, but not quite.

So, with just the + and their ramp timer, the problem is that the ramp timer completely shuts off the device so that you can't even use the remote to turn lights on once the timer period is over. There is no power at all to the device, so the device can't operate - you need to go physically hit a button on the timer to allow the device to function again. And when you do, the light will come back on at full daylight, so if you wanted to just turn on moonlight for nighttime viewing it would first come on full bright then you'd have to use the remote to turn it down quickly, which would be bad.

With the Pro things get better, but still not perfect.

With the Pro they have it setup so the device has a full on 24 hour cycle that runs between a daylight and moonlight setting. You can set the daylight to ramp up and down over 15 minutes at given times, but the moonlight will ALWAYS be on when the daylight is not. So, in other words, you can't set daylight to be on from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm and then the moonlight to be on from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm and then shut off. The moonlight will stay on all night.

However, you CAN mostly resolve this by using a separate ramp timer in ADDITION to the Pro. It looks like the best way to do this is to put the timer in-line AFTER the Pro controller (they make these things so you can chain them). Then you set the Pro controller schedule to say 7:00 am on 7:00 pm switch to moonlight, and if you want the moonlight to go full off at 9:00 pm then you set the ramp timer to power off at 9:00 pm, at which point full power to the unit will be off and if you wanted to turn it back on you'd need to physically hit a button on the timer, but when you do it would come on to the moonlight, which would at least be good. You of course need to set the ramp timer to turn power back on by 7:00 am or maybe like 6:30 am which would give a 30 minute moonlight period in the morning.

So that would mostly work, but that puts you in for $130 for the Pro $25 for the additional timer so about $155.

Still, that seems like the only real option if you want to have the moonlight feature and have the moonlight on a timer so it can also turn fully off.

This is made for fish, and we all know that fish can be totally okay with light all night, indeed many fish do stay up at night and use moonlight to feed, etc. But dragons really need full darkness at night so you would never want to just leave the moonlight on all night for them.

The other problem I see with this, though, depending on how you do your setup, is that the moonlight can't be separately programmed, so at best it's going to transition from the daylight directly to the moonlight, eventually to off, but you can't turn the daylight full off at say 5:00 pm and then turn the moonlight on at 7:00 pm and back off at 9:00 pm. In order to do that you would need an entirely separate light and timer.

But I think that's not too big a deal, especially since you CAN set the color quality of the "moonlight". So what I would do is simply use a very dim white (not bluish) light for the moonlight and it would be on for some period while my other day lights are on, and would essentially just remain on for an hour or two after all the other lights are off and then it would shut off too.

Perfect in my mind would be that you could set the "moonlight" period to fade to total darkness at a given time without the need of an additional timer, and the unit would still be on so you could use the remote to operate it even when all the lights were out (for example if you wanted to turn the moonlight back on in the middle of the night to check on things, etc.)
 

CooperDragon

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They should offer a date/timer so you can set the moonlight to sync with moon rise/set and change intensity based on the phases of the moon.
 

charmander16

Juvie Member
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CooperDragon":1kihy36y said:
They should offer a date/timer so you can set the moonlight to sync with moon rise/set and change intensity based on the phases of the moon.

Yeah, that would be cool. Really, with these LED type lights the sky is the limit in terms of how sophisticated you could make the schedules, it all about the controller. It's clearly possible to make these type of lights go through a cycle of reddish sunsets and sunrise to progressively whiter and brighter mid days. Would be cool to see a product like that. This one is pretty close and actually maybe the Orbit Marine light and controller does this, but the spectrum on that light is way too shifted toward blue since it's a salt water light.

I did go ahead and return the + to get the Pro and the Pro ended up being $120, which is still a lot, but I figured I may as well get it right if I'm going to go down this road, and these things are supposed to last quite a long time (plus they provide individual replacement bulbs).

The 18" Pro is "only" $98, which isn't too bad, and I suspect that the 18" is big enough for a typical 4X2X2 tank that is also running a basking light and 24" or 36" UVB light.

Before returning the one I had I tweaked the color settings a little. What seemed like the best color to me was setting it to full spectrum (all LEDs 100% on) and turned down the blue about half way. This gives a little warmer light, but not as warm as their "orange" light.

That's what sets this light apart from other aquarium lights. Most other aquarium lights have only a set light configuration and they all are too blue. Since this let's you modify the spectrum it makes it much more usable for many different applications, and the fact that it has built in (or add-on) fade-in/out timer options (where are absurdly difficult to find for lights) makes it pretty compelling.

I did, BTW also found another light that may be good, which also works with their ramp timer, it's these, which I may get for our gerbils: https://www.amazon.com/LEDENET-6500K-7000K-Bright-Aquarium-Lighting/dp/B00OP3P0QW/ref=pd_sim_199_4?_encoding=UTF8&refRID=339YKMF78P4XNX0QPTEK&th=1

I haven't tried these yet, but they have a cool white and warm white option, and these work with that same Current USA ramp timer.
 

kingofnobbys

BD.org Sicko
Interesting - nice literature survey and metasearch .

Only scanned it , will come back to read thoroughly when I'm fresher and more awake .

I've bookmarked !! it so I can easily return to it.
 

charmander16

Juvie Member
Original Poster
*sigh*

So I got the Pro. Now I'm returning that. Luckily I didn't return the + as I was waiting to try out the Pro first.

With the Pro there is no way to turn off the moonlight effect. When it goes into moonlight mode you can have it so there is no moonlight at all, but there is no way to make it so you have moonlight for 2 hours and then it turns off. It's either on all night or not at all. I tried putting the ramp timer in-line, but you can't put it after the Pro controller, you have to put it before, which means shutting off power to the Pro controller, which makes problems.

So, I'm going back to the + and I'll use a separate traditional moonlight bulb on it's own independent 2 hour timer for our evening viewing light.
 
The blast on my florescent hood died so I'm looking to replace the entire setup.
charmander16":1a9kfcnp said:
I'm interested in getting the Fullight TrueColor. They mention on their site,
"If your fixture has a diffusive/transparent cover... If your fixture doesn't have a diffusive/transparent cover, please consider to use an electronic low-voltage dimmer"

Gather that's because if you want to dim the light way down, you need the right type of dimmer otherwise you'll either get noise or the light will just turn off? Anyone know? Either way, I'm not investing in a dimmer just yet. I plan on using my existing with the ballast bypassed or taking apart the hood and just using the ends.

Should the new lighting span the entire length of the tank? My previous setup covered 2/3rds, centered.

Thanks!
 
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