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Light over my indoor pond..Is Kessil 160WE going to be enough?

sciencefiction

sciencefiction

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26 Feb 2013
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Hey, I need to upgrade the light over my indoor round pond. The pond is a 125cm diameter and its 73cm deep but filled to the 60cm mark only, about 735litres of water

To give an idea, this is the general look

20161025_192341_zpsqmm3jdes.jpg


It currently has one 30W flood light on top attached to a kessil gooseneck. I want to get a kessil 160WE to replace it, which is rated 40W but my guess is its quite stronger than the 30W light which is what I hope for....So how strong is a kessil 160WE? Can it penetrate well to the bottom as well as illuminate the emersed plants and floaters...

I'd rather have more light and be able to turn it down than end up with insufficient light. I currently introduced floating plants so I am going to need more light than I have...

The other option is I get a 2nd flood light to complement the one I have but I'd rather have one unit hanging over.

Any other light suggestions welcome.
 
What i would do if your awsome pond was standing in my hobby room!? I would take those goosneck clamp on desk spotlight lamps from ikea or where ever else they are cheap. Find the appropriate addapter to convert them the lampbase to MR16 12 volt spots, eg E14 to MR16 or GU10 to MR16.

Hook 'm all to a 12 volt powersupply, cheapest is an ATX from an old desktop computer you find in the trash. It is awfully simple to convert them to a ussable powersupply for everything 12 volt.. Or buy a cheap 12 volt led driver from banggood with sufficient wattage.

12 volt is pretty save to use around water and todays powersupply immediately cut of the power if it shortcuts and need a hard reboot to power up again.

Then put those extra lights to the side where the plants are in need of extra light.. How much would you need, 3 extra spots, maybe 4? That way the light is a bit concentrated where you need it and you can move it around.

Imo much more sufficient than one big massive light above the whole pond.. Because the submersed plants like crypts and javas or anubias etc. are the low light plants and do not need that much light. Everyting emersed at the sides can have it's own source like that. With one butload of lightsourse above the pond, you probably wasting more light then necessary or grow algae.. 🙂 And is much more expensive.

Now i get the feeling again, you're going to say "I'm not such a DIY guy.." 🙂 But you do not need to be.. You can keep the lamps as they are and put 12 volt on a regular plug box array. Screw the addapter into the lamp and put in a 12 volt MR16 LED spot. They come pretty cheap nowadays and the 12 watt led spots are darn strong maybe to strong for watt 😉 you need.
 
zozo said:
Now i get the feeling again, you're going to say "I'm not such a DIY guy.." 🙂 But you do not need to be.. You can keep the lamps as they are and put 12 volt on a regular plug box array.
Click to expand...

Ha, ha. That's exactly what I was going to say 🙂 Thanks Zozo. I just think that connecting extra 4 different things around the tank sides, plus connectors, etc....too many things to trip on 🙂 I already have 11 plugs inside that room...

I did look at some Aquamedic spotfix (or so named) ones that I can use additionally which are advertised for plants and I don't need to use my "great DIY" skills...I still want the kessil though.....I think the angle of the kessil is quite wide too and advertised to illuminate area of 4f so that's why I think it could work with the diameter. The floaters are moving around slowly so I can't really "spotfix" them...only the emersed plants but they also get window light.
 
I've been looking around videos of these Kessils to try to answer my own question. It looks to me one won't be enough long term for what I want to do, especially if I let the floaters cover lots of surface area. Anyway, I am thinking to buy it to illuminate the tank itself, using the 90' degree bracket I might be able to place it right on top in the middle of the tank and then attach the flood light outside the tank to illuminate the emersed plants from behind additionally to the window light they get...The window light isn't reaching the tank much at all otherwise, just the emersed plants.

Unless there are better ideas....I can't suspend the light hanging above in this room and the edge of the plastic tank is pretty wide so it's tricky attaching any sort of light unit properly unless I go with a long bar that hangs right on top of the tank but in a round tank that won't work well I think......The Kessil gooseneck is attached to the plastic lip from the inside, horizontally to the edge of the tank and then I've had to twist gooseneck backwards then forwards upward direction, to straighten it up.....You can sort of see in picture above as it starts from the inside of the edge...
 
I think you won't be happy with the Kessil unless you go with the A360 - to illuminate the whole pond area, think 2 x A360, so a bit of investment over the long term but you can start with 1, then add the other over time - get on George Farmer's wait list should he decide to try out an alternate light system to his A360's & sell his on cheap 😉 - the price on that ADA 120P system was absurd!

Is there any way to suspend lights over the pond?
 
Right from the start the A360 is going to give you a very nice 6ocm "cube" of light - OK it's really a cone shape, but it will give you the (water) depth penetration at 60cm that you just wont get anything like with the A160 .. the mount can be pretty mobile, so just use the single A360 on "Side A" in the morning, then move around the tank every 3h 😉 returning to "Side A" ~ 12h later .... there must be some kid's robotic toy that zozo can DIY for this 😀
 
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