Christmas lights and heresy.

[Erasmus Crowley]

Let me start this post by saying that I'm definitely questioning my own sanity a little bit. I don't intend anyone to take this seriously or try to replicate this monstrosity, probably ever.

That being said, I think that there is a fair chance that I'm the first person to ever do this, and I can't resist sharing so that you guys can all collectively facepalm with me.

So all this started with a photo kind of like this one: (image source here)

And also, a light spectrum chart like this...

A natural reef is mostly light blue and cyan, with a pretty ridiculously large amount of green in there too. Look at the photo above and pay attention to the green everywhere. And yet, all our lights have giant 450nm royal blue peaks. So I became a little bit obsessed (okay, very obsessed) with trying to add light blue, cyan, and green to capture that natural greenish and light-blueish color and spectrum.

My lights are a T5 hybrid setup running ATI bulbs with a pair of Kessils A360Xs. I also run a Reptisun 5.0 12" T5 to add a bit of UVA and UVB. Already complete overkill. However, it seemed like no matter what I did, I couldn't hit that sweet spot where the cyan and light blue were higher than the royal blue. The Kessils didn't give me enough control to reduce the royal blue, and the T5s were stuck at the spectrum they came with, which inconveniently had almost no green.

I discovered the existence of a few T5 bulbs that peak in the cyan range that I wanted. Bulbs like this one, and also this one. Both of these proved impossible for me to get. I reached out to retailers to try to convince them to order them and sell them to me, and I even reached out to the manufacturer and offered to pay for overseas international shipping costs, but everyone just told me that they weren't interested in taking my money.

So what is a reefkeeper with a few loose screws in the head to do?

I wanted the even blanket spread of the T5 bulbs, but I also wanted the controlled spectrum of LEDs without the disco shimmer that I find really unpleasant. So I needed to find a source of light in the cyan and green range, that is extremely diffuse, but also didn't add any orange or red. And this was extremely challenging.

Until I thought about christmas lights. lol

Specifically, LED core, C9 size christmas lights that use about 0.8W per diode and they even come with a built in diffuser. Brilliant!

So anyways, I started blastin... And this happened...

The bulbs originally had a 6" gap of wire between them. So this was 12.5 feet of christmas lights. Using some zip ties, I squished it down to about 36 inches. Which was just the right size to fit in my canopy over my reef tank.

Here is what they look like turned on...

Not bad right? It lit up the whole dang closet. I was pretty shocked.

So into the canopy they went! Behold! Christmas lights hanging right next to ATI blue pluses, ATI actinics, and Kessil A360Xs.

And this is what the tank looked like with JUST the christmas lights turned on.

It was a very solid blanket of light. Zero shimmer or disco effect, and minimal shadowing. It's worth noting here that this isn't all because of the diffusers on the individual bulbs. I purposefully use the white painted walls inside of the canopy as an additional reflector and diffuser for all my lights, so that is contributing to the even-ness of the spread. My Apex says that the string of bulbs is pulling about 19w. That's pretty respectable! That's half a T5 bulb's power draw for this 36" fixture.

So of course I had to break out my PAR meter and figure out how much light was actually there...

Turns out, they added an absolutely overwhelming FOUR whole PAR. You read that right. 4. Not 40. Just... 4.

On the bright side, it looks like I got the color right. I mean, just look at my tank and compare it to the reef picture that I included above. Nailed it, right?

So... Was it worth it? Probably not. But hey, I'm pretty sure no one has ever done it before. So that's worth something, I think?

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Interesting experiment, never would have thought about using Christmas lights to light my tank haha

 

[j.falk]

+1 for creativity.

 

[Koigula]

When my 90 yo grandma came to visit she asked why I took sunshine off my tank and put up christmas tree lights.

She was right I swapped out Hamilton 14Ks for a sponsors on this forums LEDs.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Personally I love tacky decorations, especially when it comes to Christmas decorations. I think it looks great.

 

[flagg37]

How does it look with the rest of your lighting?

 

[Erasmus Crowley]

How does it look with the rest of your lighting?

When my lights first come on everything is dimmed down as low as it will go. Including the T5s, because I have a dimmable fixture.

So at that point, it looks fantastic. It's exactly what I wanted. That happens when the lights start to ramp up, and when they finish ramping down.

After about an hour of ramping though, I can't tell the difference. The christmas lights are just too weak. If I watch the tank while I turn the christmas lights on and off then my eyes see it as a small change in brightness. I can't really perceive any change in the color.

During the peak of my light cycle, my rest of my lighting system is putting out about 110 par. So the extra 4 par from the light blue and green seems to be completely negligible.

 

[flagg37]

When my lights first come on everything is dimmed down as low as it will go. Including the T5s, because I have a dimmable fixture.

So at that point, it looks fantastic. It's exactly what I wanted. That happens when the lights start to ramp up, and when they finish ramping down.

After about an hour of ramping though, I can't tell the difference. The christmas lights are just too weak. If I watch the tank while I turn the christmas lights on and off then my eyes see it as a small change in brightness. I can't really perceive any change in the color.

During the peak of my light cycle, my rest of my lighting system is putting out about 110 par. So the extra 4 par from the light blue and green seems to be completely negligible.

So you just need like 20 strands and you’ll be good.

 

[Erasmus Crowley]

So you just need like 20 strands and you’ll be good.

I like the way you think.

 

[Koigula]

Looks like like T5s are coming back?

 

[Erasmus Crowley]

Looks like like T5s are coming back?

Do you mean the T5's in my canopy?

I never took them out. I just turned everything else off temporarily to measure the PAR with just the christmas lights.

I knew from the start that there was no way that this string of christmas lights could put out enough PAR to replace two ATI blue plus bulbs. So my plan was always to use them as supplements to everything else I already had.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Looks like like T5s are coming back?

They never left...

 

[fish farmer]

Let me start this post by saying that I'm definitely questioning my own sanity a little bit. I don't intend anyone to take this seriously or try to replicate this monstrosity, probably ever.

That being said, I think that there is a fair chance that I'm the first person to ever do this, and I can't resist sharing so that you guys can all collectively facepalm with me.

So all this started with a photo kind of like this one: (image source here)

And also, a light spectrum chart like this...

A natural reef is mostly light blue and cyan, with a pretty ridiculously large amount of green in there too. Look at the photo above and pay attention to the green everywhere. And yet, all our lights have giant 450nm royal blue peaks. So I became a little bit obsessed (okay, very obsessed) with trying to add light blue, cyan, and green to capture that natural greenish and light-blueish color and spectrum.

My lights are a T5 hybrid setup running ATI bulbs with a pair of Kessils A360Xs. I also run a Reptisun 5.0 12" T5 to add a bit of UVA and UVB. Already complete overkill. However, it seemed like no matter what I did, I couldn't hit that sweet spot where the cyan and light blue were higher than the royal blue. The Kessils didn't give me enough control to reduce the royal blue, and the T5s were stuck at the spectrum they came with, which inconveniently had almost no green.

I discovered the existence of a few T5 bulbs that peak in the cyan range that I wanted. Bulbs like this one, and also this one. Both of these proved impossible for me to get. I reached out to retailers to try to convince them to order them and sell them to me, and I even reached out to the manufacturer and offered to pay for overseas international shipping costs, but everyone just told me that they weren't interested in taking my money.

So what is a reefkeeper with a few loose screws in the head to do?

I wanted the even blanket spread of the T5 bulbs, but I also wanted the controlled spectrum of LEDs without the disco shimmer that I find really unpleasant. So I needed to find a source of light in the cyan and green range, that is extremely diffuse, but also didn't add any orange or red. And this was extremely challenging.

Until I thought about christmas lights. lol

Specifically, LED core, C9 size christmas lights that use about 0.8W per diode and they even come with a built in diffuser. Brilliant!

So anyways, I started blastin... And this happened...

The bulbs originally had a 6" gap of wire between them. So this was 12.5 feet of christmas lights. Using some zip ties, I squished it down to about 36 inches. Which was just the right size to fit in my canopy over my reef tank.

Here is what they look like turned on...

Not bad right? It lit up the whole dang closet. I was pretty shocked.

So into the canopy they went! Behold! Christmas lights hanging right next to ATI blue pluses, ATI actinics, and Kessil A360Xs.

And this is what the tank looked like with JUST the christmas lights turned on.

It was a very solid blanket of light. Zero shimmer or disco effect, and minimal shadowing. It's worth noting here that this isn't all because of the diffusers on the individual bulbs. I purposefully use the white painted walls inside of the canopy as an additional reflector and diffuser for all my lights, so that is contributing to the even-ness of the spread. My Apex says that the string of bulbs is pulling about 19w. That's pretty respectable! That's half a T5 bulb's power draw for this 36" fixture.

So of course I had to break out my PAR meter and figure out how much light was actually there...

Turns out, they added an absolutely overwhelming FOUR whole PAR. You read that right. 4. Not 40. Just... 4.

On the bright side, it looks like I got the color right. I mean, just look at my tank and compare it to the reef picture that I included above. Nailed it, right?

So... Was it worth it? Probably not. But hey, I'm pretty sure no one has ever done it before. So that's worth something, I think?

Not crazy.... I've wanted to get a "seafoam green" color to my tank for the ramp up time.

 

[Koigula]

Do you mean the T5's in my canopy?

I never took them out. I just turned everything else off temporarily to measure the PAR with just the christmas lights.

I knew from the start that there was no way that this string of christmas lights could put out enough PAR to replace two ATI blue plus bulbs. So my plan was always to use them as supplements to everything else I already had.

They still like like poor man t5's. I use 8x 54w over a 4 foot tank.

I added led strip light on back wall for pop effect though finally.