Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Atonomus Underwater Light Attraction

In almost every post I want to increase forage. This is to ask some questions from the learned pros on the "added Value" of putting a underwater light to attract zooplankton, photoplankton etc... I have seen my BG sit and eat at the underwater light -all night-. The video below how they'll do it, they come and get a mouthful bumping the light and a cloud of food comes off it just at the end of the video.

[ hey admins can you get the YouTube video to work - I've tried 15 different combos... none work...

Click the link, suggest you watch the video in 1080p to see all the critters! -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2siUUjtFl8

It's embedded right below this]


The unit works really well, once I figured out which way the photosensitive switch needed to be positioned...

So this is what happened. I made the design and they are in a plan I drew up and acquired the parts for....


Once I had the parts I brought them into the bench to see if the theory would works... so I wired it, went thru the switches to turn it on...

"Watson Come Here!!"



Now this light puts out 1,000 lumen 360 degrees, supposedly drawing 10 watts DC. I tried to right size the solar panel and battery, to run almost all night from a daily charge. The actual fish management theory is that the light will attract all manner of critters, zooplankton, phytoplankton, invertebrates and best of all - vertebrates, to eat the entire ladder! Well, I assembled it last June, set it all up and waited for darkness.

Stand alone, Night to Dawn, Solar powered Fish feeder (Mark-I), Voltage controlled, manual off switch.


Night fell and I was astounded at the amount of light it gave off. As you can see in the reflection it's still mid-dusk. You can see a bluegill lit up about 10' thru the water...


It took about a week, but once the fish figured out there was a dense cloud of 'food' they would move in and just sit and munch - I put the snorkel and mask on and dived in.

Incredible, I didn't know the pond had fresh water shrimp, but they were zipping by my mask, fully visible in the light (which means the fish can see an eat them). I dorked up and overwrote the video I took, but it was great. Needless to say, it worked from June until I turned it off (manual) during this last bow season. One the dock light facing the water did is attack bugs but then at night those bugs would seek out your blood. With this underwater light, it seems much better, no aerial bugs (But that's another thread).;)

The underwater light under the dock at pitch dark and the illumination from the light. Honestly - I swim at night and this is just so worth it, just for this, this big beautiful bloom of green light! When you're out swimming in pitch dark, night sky, you can see the light on your legs , underwater, from 20'.
You can see the previous dock light on the outer left edge of the dock. Those came off in Oct and won't be going back on there.


The real question is there any research if this will add to the target fish body weight gain or am I just changing when they would eat the forage already in the pond?

Thanks.

Stressless, my videos aren't showing up today either, so I checked your post, and it's nothing you're doing wrong. It must be a server burp.

Wasn't this a Ron Howard movie?

Sless,

This project is a good use case for PWM. I would agree your LED uses 10watts continuously. There are other loads like the controller, internal resistance of the battery, etc. The 50 watt panel upgrade and the 35 AH battery upgrade will also do nicely. If your controller is shutting off your system at 10.4 volts, you are hurting that battery if it is LA. Other chemistries will vary.

About your calculations for energy produced, you will not get full rating for 10 hours. Full rating is based on 1000watts per square meter which is only seen around high noon. Also, PWM controllers do not capture rated wattage EVER. It is just not possible. So your 20W panel will make at most 15watts using quick math. From there, it goes down earlier and later in the day. Expect 50% for 8 hours. It will be a lot closer to your actual production.

I will be interested to see how the newer setup works. I would also adjust the protection voltage to something closer to 12.2 volts so as to not damage the battery. With a 35 AH battery, you should be able to see 10 hours of use out of that 10 watt light.You will be burning closer to 15 AHs during that time leaving you with more than 50% SOC remaining.

..man I like the this site but the FORUM is a PITA to work with to create a decent story!! Video's not working - at all - in any format. There're all there in the format the site says is correct

Quote

Enter the contents in the format shown below:
YouTube ID; eg: xxxxxxxxxx (or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxxx)

[video:youtube][/video]


Screen grab from a video = PITA! To get it ppost to his forum I had to cut and save it to my computer, then go open the image gallery on this site, then save it if was SMALL enough, then copy the link, then go back to this post and paste it in - Imagine the GREAT content and stories IF they a decent front end to this....


Screen grab from one of the videos...





Just noticed I didn't put up videos of this working - so this is over a couple years now and works -all night -every night... just by the sun coming up. No pellets, no feeder, no fuss.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i2siUUjtFl8" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2siUUjtFl8

""
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmbCNkWZmew

[video:google]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qko5uWoYsSU[/video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qko5uWoYsSU

...and my night vision 30x cam I can beam in a watch from anywhere.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeAQ2JLeM1k

Apologies for your frustrations. We all are in this together and yes it is VERY frustrating that this forum cannot accept pictures from our cell phones without extra software and steps to resize them (most cell phones take pictures larger than the 2Mb max allowed by the forum software). After a recent upgrade the ability to embed or post youtube videos stopped working. I have no idea why this is hard to figure out or if anyone is working on it. I've asked the mods a few times to look into it but no one replied. is it a simple matter of updating to a newer version of the ubb software? I would think making content easier to post would be a top priority to attract more users which means more clicks on advertising and more income stream.

thanks for trying so hard and at least we can try to click on the links.

Forum software was updated yesterday so it should be working for you,now.