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Is there any way to see nocturnal fish and still have them come out? I think I remember a post about a moonlight, which was a DIY guide. Also is there any light spectrum that maybe they can't see, maybe a blacklight?

What does that mean, Bob? "Till the cows come home." Where have the cows been?

i have seen people make moon lights out of LED's before, that would be really easy to make too.

what to do is shop for blue LEDS...not painted ones or ones with blue plastic but ones that burn blue. you wanna aim somewhere between 470nm and 480nm which is the moons spectrum of light. the fish see it but nothing like we do. we see it far brighter then they do but this does NOT mean you can go crazy with them. you want enough lighting to make out outlines and some details.

here are some places you might wanna look at:
[link=moonlighting cheap]http://www.kaotica.com/frag/diy/moonlight/" style="COLOR: #00FFFF[/link]
[link=how to]http://www.lsdiodes.com/tutorial/" style="COLOR: #00FFFF[/link]

hope this helps, DIY will run ya about $20, store bought will run ya about a hundread.

Great article! I've actually been researching that myself. I have a stonefish who is only active at night and I wanted to find a way to watch him without disturbing him.

I'd avoid blacklights on a tank, I believe that they can damage fish eyes.

Last edited by puffer_archer at 07-Apr-2005 23:26

I used a blue cold cathode hooked up (externally) to a hotwired ATX PSU (if that doesnt make sense, basically a cold cathode is a light designed for going inside a computer and is powered off the standard computer power supply, which I placed near the tank and hotwired with a paperclip)

worked very well, but having a 400watt PSU next to 50g of water was a tad hairy, so I got rid of it in the end.

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions