Cold Cathode Lighting?

I've only used them for night lighting. They aren't anywhere near intense enough to use on a planted tank as the sole source of light.

Brian

I think they are perfect...just set it up right. For a night light they rock.

I used the same article.

Hi,
Thanks for the responces and the link to that artical.

I'm running a pair og 4" blue tubes for night lighting, one each on a planted 5.5 gallon tank. I'm using a 12v-500ma power adapter and that seem to work out nicely but when I user that same power addapter on a pair on 12" tubes the addapter got warmer that I would like.

I have one of those power use meeters that plus in between the wall outlet and the item you want to test. I'll document some of my findings and post it.

IIRC the 12" tubes eat about 3 watts, so your 500mA power brick will be maxed out with two tubes.

I use old ATX pc power supplies. Just short the proper wires on the atx connector, and viola!

cookingnerd607 said:

I use old ATX pc power supplies. Just short the proper wires on the atx connector, and viola!

Click to expand...

This sounds like a good option, I've got plenty of power supplies handy.

Can you give details on how to do this?

Yep Its the green, to the black, any black will do however. Another use im looking at is powering some 12v pumps for dosing

Just curious about these computer power supplies... are you loading down any other of the outputs? Switching supplies usually have a minimum load or they will be damaged. Or can the other outputs burn up and the one you need keep working fine?

Ive been using old computer psus (or ones that dont have proper voltages on their rails) to power 12v, and 5v equipment for many many years, and only hook up what I need to power. There are some atx dummy loads you can purchase for testing psus.

I'm running 4 12" tubes on a custom 15g cube I made out of plexi. I'm putting together a planted 45g and I was considering moving my cathodes to the 45g.

Does anyone know what the light range of cathode lights are? would 4 tubes work on a planted tank?

CCFL's (cold cathode fluorescent lights) are very similar to any other fluorescent light. An arc through the tube produces UV which strickes a phosphor coating. The type of phosphors determine the light output. Just like fluorescents, it could really be anything. Youd have to get the info from the manufacturer probably.

I might be completely wrong but CCFL's are often used in backlights for things like laptops and other lcd screens, so most white ones might be massed prduced for this, which should be around 5500k-6500k. But like I said thats just a guess (if its white that is).