fishyfish22
New Member
hello everyone, i'm new to this site but not so much new to electronics. i took an electronics class my freshman year (it is my summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school) so i know some of what i need to know (ohms law, resistors, LED's, diodes, etc) but i'll admit it out front there is still a lot to learn, so if i do not know a term or something of the sort on here please don't bash on me. what i thought would be interesting to do is something that as far as i know has never been done before. i wish to start a miniature aquarium in my school locker. now before you jump to crazy conclusions you can relax because i have looked up the handbook and manual and read/re read it countless times and it is not against the rules at my school, so i can do this. also, i'm not really for keeping fish in such small tanks. i know it is done and under proper conditions it is successful, but it won't be done in my tank for multiple reasons. one is because the fish will probably die, and two being that if a teacher asks if i have a "fish" tank in my locker i can openly say no. no, what i plan to keep in my locker is much more interesting than fish... i plan to keep corals. that's right. corals. do not worry i have corals currently in a larger tank and am knowledgeable in their requirements, one(the most obvious) being light. another being flow but some corals do not like flow so that will be asked upon further research as to what i plan to keep in there. filtration will be biological and basically be provided by the rockwork and the sand i put in the tank. basically, all i need is the lighting. "but wait" you might ask," you plan to do this in a locker, and there is no power plug in a locker..." well that is the reason i am posting this incredibly long thread asking for help. the lighting has to be battery powered. that is also what stops me from just buying lighting from online or making it myself.
here are the constraints to the project:
1)the lights must be battery powered. or if anyone knows a way to produce voltage in a small amount of space please let me know.
2)i hope to have 12 royal blue led's on a heatsink and 6 leds cool white or a color similar
-the important ones are the 12 royal blues because that is the light the corals use to grow. 12 on at the same tie is way to much for a tank the size of what i need, so what i plan to do is have 6 on at a time while the other six are off to provide longer batteries
3)i know powering all 18 led's at once using a single battery for 8 hours a day is near impossible, so most likely i'll have to use multiple circuits, preferably one battery powering one or two led's. that way it'll be much easier to have six on and six off at the same time.
4)i have a limited amount of space. the aquarium i intend to use is a 5 gallon and the footprint is 16" by 8" and i plan to build a small canopy to conceal the lighting with the exception of the switches and the batteries on the outside so i can change them easily.
5)the lights will be on for 8 hours each day, from when i come in at 8:00 AM until when i leave which is 3:30 Pm. after that they will be off until the next day, which is why they require a switch to turn on/off and i will change batteries when necessary.
what i am asking for is the circuitry to help me with this. i am fairly new and do not remember everything since my freshman year, though i have been researching quite a bit.
i am off of school until halfway through august, i hope that with the community participating i can have this done by halfway through july to get ready and just install it when the year starts.
please bear with me, i know if enough people pool together what they know and contribute this project can get done. this is as far as i know what i would like to add to the tank. any questions feel free to ask and i'll answer what i can.
here are the constraints to the project:
1)the lights must be battery powered. or if anyone knows a way to produce voltage in a small amount of space please let me know.
2)i hope to have 12 royal blue led's on a heatsink and 6 leds cool white or a color similar
-the important ones are the 12 royal blues because that is the light the corals use to grow. 12 on at the same tie is way to much for a tank the size of what i need, so what i plan to do is have 6 on at a time while the other six are off to provide longer batteries
3)i know powering all 18 led's at once using a single battery for 8 hours a day is near impossible, so most likely i'll have to use multiple circuits, preferably one battery powering one or two led's. that way it'll be much easier to have six on and six off at the same time.
4)i have a limited amount of space. the aquarium i intend to use is a 5 gallon and the footprint is 16" by 8" and i plan to build a small canopy to conceal the lighting with the exception of the switches and the batteries on the outside so i can change them easily.
5)the lights will be on for 8 hours each day, from when i come in at 8:00 AM until when i leave which is 3:30 Pm. after that they will be off until the next day, which is why they require a switch to turn on/off and i will change batteries when necessary.
what i am asking for is the circuitry to help me with this. i am fairly new and do not remember everything since my freshman year, though i have been researching quite a bit.
i am off of school until halfway through august, i hope that with the community participating i can have this done by halfway through july to get ready and just install it when the year starts.
please bear with me, i know if enough people pool together what they know and contribute this project can get done. this is as far as i know what i would like to add to the tank. any questions feel free to ask and i'll answer what i can.