LED T8 Tube Aquarium light Plant Growth Light with DC12V Input Come with RGB Remote DIY Color In Amazing Design Freeshipping on sale US $25.13 - 27.32The next major design element of the new 177G Cichlid Show tank is the lighting system. This aspect of the tank is *very* important to the overall quality of the YouTube Live stream. It’s also the single most expensive component of the new tank (the low Iron, tempered glass is second largest expense). Lighting isn’t all that important for African Cichlids compared to things like filtration and diet. Aside from the basic day / night cycle there isn’t much more you need to worry about with these fish. So when talking about lighting African Cichlid tanks we’re mostly concerned with how it looks to the human eye and secondarily how well algae will grow. My experience over the past year working with the existing 75G YouTube Live stream tank is that digital cameras (including the iPhone) are not tuned to deal well with blue light.

Instead they seem to perform best when in light conditions that most closely match bright sunlight. 10-12K LEDs are the best bet in this regard. fish tank light wetThe cooler and crisper the light source the better. fish tank water greenHere’s an example of my current 75G tank’s 10K diy LEDs tuned to near perfection…fish tank lights 3ft Using 10K and 12K white LEDs results in a clean, accurate stream image and it looks amazing from outside the tank. 90 gallon fish tank glass top10K LEDs also throw off a very nice “shimmer” effect that’s hard to get with traditional T5 and T8 glass tubes. small fish tank india

Watch the video above for a minute or two and you’ll see the shimmer. The shimmer you see in that video is natural shimmer created from filtration and powerheads. small fish tank filter petsmartSo while 10Ks are what we want to target we have to be careful not to remove all of the blue. If too much of the blue spectrum is taken out the blue and purple fish tend to look washed out. We also need a bit of red and blue in order to keep red algae growing on the rocks. I personally like red algae on granite for Cichlids as it prevents the fish from hurting themselves on the rocks and gives them something to snack on in a pinch. Malawi Mbuna habitats don’t typically have a lot of plants due to pH levels typically over 7.8. The pH in The Cichlid Show tank hovers around 7.8 with a hardness of 10-15GH. Terrible for plant growth. Plus the Mbunas will eat pretty much any vegetable matter you place in the tank – including most all common submerged plants.

Further, since we aren’t growing coral we just don’t need much blue or red in the tank lighting. When it comes to lighting selection for an Mbuna tank we can focus on the appearance of the fish almost exclusively. One of my key requirements of this new lighting system is an automated day / night cycle. The BlueFish Controller is perfect for the job. It does day/night, weather, lunar / solar conditions, and custom modes. I think it’s important that the fish experience a proper circadian cycle. I’v definitely noticed that if I leave the lights on all night by accident the fish feeding becomes irregular. Also if you do a manual ramp via an on/off switch at morning and night you’ll notice that the fish startle and stress when the lights come on. The BlueFish device solves these problems. It even synchronizes with the current weather patterns in any location you give it in order to dynamically change the lighting to fit the actual outside conditions. I can choose Atlanta, GA for my location or Malawi Africa for the fish’s home.

The default day/night ramp looks like this: The design shown below involves 4 unique lighting zones. Each with a specific purpose. In the morning the 12″ strip LEDs will provide initial morning ramp with additional zone kicking in and brightness increases as the day carries on. Zones 3/4 and 5/6 (Kessil A160WE pendants) can be remotely tuned by the Bluefish to gradually transition from 6K to 9k as the day wears on. During midday all lights will be on at full volume. In the evening we transition the Kessils off and rely on the 12″ strips once again. The zone layout looks like this: ZONE #1 – 1x 24” TruLumen 12K LED strip – frames up the back side of the L shape and will be used heavily at night for indirect “moonlight”. ZONE #2 – 4x 12” TruLumen 12K LED strip – (L1,L2,R1,R2) – there will be four of these oriented front to back. These are accent lights to be used  during mid-day brightness peak and at night for moonlight and shimmer. The Kessil A160 Tune Sun (6000K to 9000K range) is the primary source of LUX in this system and by far the most expensive hardware component in the tank.

Each pendant is $269 and at 24-30″ of coverage per Kessil I need a minimum of four. The Kessil integrates directly with the BlueFish Controller to create two Kessil lighting zones: ZONE #3/4 – Kessil #3 and #4: These two Kessil units are pulled closer to the mid point and should interact nicely with the 12K ZONE1 TruLumen strip. ZONE #5/6 – Kessil #5 and #6. These are the “outer” Kessil pendants. I suspect I’ll keep these bright in the day and almost completely off at night. We’ll have to experiment but I think the basic layout of the two Kessil ZONEs will offer a lot of interesting lighting combinations. Note on controlability: for the Kessils the BlueFish can control not only brightness but also color temperature. If I want to “warm up” the aquarium with a bit of 6K light I can. The Trulumen strips do not have a color temperature setting. They’re hard coded at 12K. But this also allows me to split up the output of port 1 into ZONE1 and ZONE2. The actual wiring looks like this…