Blue LED vs White LED Moonlight
 

So Ive been looking into building one for my tank but wasn't sure on some things. I've noticed that the the Current USA Satellite Lighting systems use white LEDs and those look amazing. Why does everyone use blue LEDs?

Its supposed to simulate the moon. But why white over blue? Don't know

I just bought this great string of 120 LEDs, 4 feet long, for $25 at Lee's Electronics in Vancouver today. All you need is a 12 volt transformer to hook up to it. The LEDs are completely sealed so water and humidity are not a problem. It gives great full tank coverage for me and boy do the colors pop! A great low cost alternative to the Moonlights at $18-20 for two LEDs.

as far as the blue leds are concerned i would think that its not so hard on the corals and stimulates the night time moon as the white Leds would be brighter..and the corals don't have a chance to sleep and regain strength to grow...IMO the white leds are just for our own enjoyment to watch the tank in a brighter light...

does anyone with white leds use theirs 24/7?

why white
if you want to go with blue:idea: i have a couple that i could give you,
it could be easily rigged with any dc power supply.

I have the Current Outer Orbit and it has both white and blue LED's on separate plug ins. I only use the white if there's something I really want to see at night. I suppose if you really got into it, you could time a 24 hr period more accurately and could also simulate a full moon once a month.

To be honest, the blue ones are the ones I use every night. They do give a really nice effect.

i payed a visit to petland and it turns out Marina makes these LED. you can choose from red, blue, white and green they sell for $18 cdn. You can but multiple ones and hook them up with a hub.

if your wanting to actually light a tank using LEDs seems the trend is to use a 50/50 split of cree XRE royal blue and white to create a 14k look.
http://www.ledsupply.com/ for those that are DIY minded they are quite powerful especially when coupled with a focusing lense they produce very very high PAR numbers.
tighter the beam the higher the comparison to MHs.
if you want to look at building your own nano-reef.com in the lighting section has a ton of articles and threads about builds and how to do it. so far alot of success for total tank lighting.
also you get the shimmer effect of MHs some say even more so then a MH due to LEDs shimmering already.

They carry the same ones at Wal Mart too, can't remember the price off hand, but would assume cheaper than Petland sells them for.

i use white leds at night on a timer .... as soon as the atincs go out the whites led come on

oh damn, but its good to know i may go get a blue one as well. thanks

To me, actual moonlight does not look very blue.... once in a blue moon? I think the reason many people prefer blue LEDs as after hours lighting is because many corals fluoresce under that colour more than under a whiter light. I'd say if you're looking to replicate the real world, white is more appropriate.

The blue light is solely for us. The human eye doesn't percieve the blue spectrum as well as some other's and it there by looks "dim" to us. On the other hand, I've read that fish percieve blue VERY well... a blue moon LED *could* be bright to them. I've been thinking of a moonlight for a little while now, it'll be white or red.

Chris

I personally wouldn't mess with red as its not a natural colour spectrum for corals.
been having to decide on a MH bulb and what Kelvin to us and this study is rather interesting.
turns out enough red light and you bleach certain coral which is natural when you think about how well red light doesn't penetrates water vs blue.
definitely needs some further studies to find out if it applies to softies and shallow water corals as well.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2008/12/aafeature1

What we need is for one of our scuba enthusiasts to go for a night dive under a full moon with some light measuring instrumentation......uh, par meter, some sort of spectrometer? Then use the same instruments in a tank at night under different colour LEDs.

Interesting article and a good argument against red as a moon light. Thanks! :)