tank sensitivity to infrared light?

[Hasufax]

Hi all,

I am planning to put a webcam in front of my tank so I can watch and keep an eye on things from work. The camera has infrared lights, not visible to human eyes, that come on when the room gets dark, so hopefully I will be also be able to watch the goings-on at night. My question is, do you think the IR light would bother any of the tank inhabitants, or interfere with any growth cycles? The tank isn't even set up yet so this is all conjectural so far, but I am planning to have mostly invertebrates (coral, etc) plus a couple of fish, and I don't know if the IR light would affect them at all.

Bob

[GKarshens]

I am pretty sure it won't. I had read somewhere that red light was invisible to fish. I put a red gel over a flashlight to look at my tank, and it seemed to work just fine. Most of the inhabitants didn't react at all, and if they did it wasn't anywhere near the way they would with a normal flashlight.

[caferacermike]

A couple of small LED's in white or blue generally won't affect the fish either and will help light up the tank. Red does not seem to bother at all. You might be able to add a lot more reds with a few white or blue so you can really see into the tank.

Just one thing to note, I read online a couple of years back that thieves were tuning into all these home cams/baby monitors to watch your routine. They would find the stream and work backwards, some were opportunistic in that they were already a member of some forum and heard about/saw the stream. They tun in and see approximately what time everyone is gone for work and then break in. It is said that the reflection of the room can be seen in the tank's glass. They can see you walking by or watching TV and such. It's just something to think about.

If you decide that the risk is worth it, or that there is no risk, chat up ACampbell as he had one running for a few years on his bio-cube.

[+dapettit]

+1 ACampbell

[Timfish]

It's my understanding some of the flashlight fish have infrared bioluminescent organs to communicate but anything in our tanks aren't going to have that ability.

[OgreMkV]

If you have a glass tank, it won't work anyway, IR doesn't penetrate glass.

[+Hydro]

IR will absolutely pass through glass that doesn't have a special coating...even then it will only block percentages of IR. IR passes through almost anything thin but polished aluminum. For example polished aluminum is used on plywood for radiant barrier for roofs and walls during home construction to block IR from entering your home. We sell IR blocking products for air-cooled lighting so we are very familiar with it.

FYI our lighting puts out IR, especially MH lighting. Here is a pic of a 1000 watt MH bulb in a reflector with one of our IR blocking blankets on it taken with an IR camera. We raised up the corner of the blanket to show the difference with and without.

So in other words IR is already being introduced in our tanks so the camera should make no difference.

[caferacermike]

Lol, thats a lot of protection to grow tomatos. I've been secretly hoping the DEA would bust open my doors due to my increased electricity use and that hot spot I call my reef tank.

[cardsfan12]

I know some of my fish have gone after my lazer pointer before. It's red and is a light and they definately see it. Being a lazer I'm not sure if this is in a whole different category or not I just thought I'd throw it out there.

[+ACampbell]

You absolutly MUST program your camera to only display when the lights are on if you are going to share your feed publicly. I also recommend only pointing it on a limited view of the tank. On my old site, awesomreef.com I used php to alter the time the feed would show, rather than messing with the rather limited options of most built-in camera servers.

[+Hydro]

Lol, thats a lot of protection to grow tomatos. I've been secretly hoping the DEA would bust open my doors due to my increased electricity use and that hot spot I call my reef tank.

Well we actually sell the for gardners that are air-cooling reflectors using oustside air. If the garden is 75 degrees and the air used to cool is 85 degrees then the reflector and all of the ducting act as heaters making the a/c work harder...using more energy. These insulating blankets are to keep the heat from entering the room making the air-cooling more effecient. We had to use IR blocking material b/c without it the blankets would just heat up as much as the reflector over several hours making them useless, the IR material block 99% of the heat making the outside of the blanket room temperature and usually just undeneath it's about 120F.

[Will]

I may be wrong, but an IR camera would not work in a reef tank nearly as well, as most fish are cold blooded and stay at the temp of the tank water. since everything in your tank would be at the same temp, you would not be able to see anything.