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Has anyone used fans that have blue LEDs in them? I was at Microcenter looking at fans and started to think that if I got those instead of plain fans, they could do double-duty for nightime LEDs. Any experience or thoughts on this?

LED's are novelty lights. Corals do receive light from the moon but only on a cyclical basis. They never receive direct light at night.

Forrest, don't the LED's only operate when the fan is powered? Unless you need the evaporation, it would seem a waste of energy, then, to run the fan at night.

.... not to mention that these are not designed for water use. You would need to have 4-pin molex connectors to power them, which aren't exactly watertight. The fans themselves are pretty cheaply made, and I would worry about them getting any salt on them at all - these things smoke and die from dust alone.

 

If one were to go to all the trouble of adapting these, I think it would end up being easier to build your own. Also, the more evaporation you introduce into a smaller tank, the more you're effectively destabilizing your water parameters.

.... not to mention that these are not designed for water use. You would need to have 4-pin molex connectors to power them, which aren't exactly watertight. The fans themselves are pretty cheaply made, and I would worry about them getting any salt on them at all - these things smoke and die from dust alone.

 

If one were to go to all the trouble of adapting these, I think it would end up being easier to build your own. Also, the more evaporation you introduce into a smaller tank, the more you're effectively destabilizing your water parameters.

 

I agree they are not designed for water use, they would likely bind and sieze very quickly. You would also need to run a power inverter to give them the right current to run as they run off a computer power supply and not straight AC.

 

Having had to replace completely siezed fans because the person who built my hood used radio shack fans which are not designed for water use, I wouldn't recommend it.

IMO clip on fans work better as far as airflow and are cheaper than most computer fans. I use a vortex fan and it was $10 and blows a good amount of air out.

I know that moonlights are only for people not for the light doing anything for the tank, and don't use the moonlights on my fixture because it's one more thing to plug in that I don't need and have no place to plug. I just figured if the lights are already in the fans anyway and therefore don't have to take up plug space, maybe it would be an interesting idea to use fans with LEDs in them.

 

My tank gets hot, so I run a fan all of the time in addition to the daytime light fixture fans. Fans with LEDs would be running at night so the LEDs would be on at night.

 

I want to use PC fans with a power supply basically because I only have one place to plug a fan in. When I build my hood with retros (T-5), I will need multiple smaller fans. I can have small fans spread out and still only have to use one cord. I know all about power supplies and I've always got a spare or two laying around waiting for a purpose. I plan on being very careful with my lighting and fan electrical stuff.

 

Of course that takes us all into the whole hood building which wasn't the point of the thread. Is there anyone who has actually used them, who runs the fans at night to actually make having fans with LEDs make any sense?

Oh, go for it... get several different colors, and a controller that turns them on and off in time to music! I'll lend you a 'smoke machine' that I bought on a whim, and you can have a disco-tank party under the actinics!

 

bob

Oh, go for it... get several different colors, and a controller that turns them on and off in time to music! I'll lend you a 'smoke machine' that I bought on a whim, and you can have a disco-tank party under the actinics!

 

bob

Good lord no. The fan inside of my pc's power supply of all things has multi-colored LEDs.

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