Hi everyone.

I have a marineland LED moonlight strip and noticed it might be alittle to bright in my 40 gallon tank. So I had to modify it to only show a few less LED lights. Does anyone use a different method of giving natural moonlight?
I usually give them 4 hours of darkness before the timer kicks on the moonlight.

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36 Gallon Saltwater reef tank
Ocellaris Clown, Scooter Dragonet, sandsifter star, Decorator crab, emerald crab, coralline snails, blue leg hermit crab, and horseshoe crab.
Zooad's and shrooms
40 pounds of Live sand, 20 pounds of LR

Well being an engineer I am working on a micro controller to control my lights.

I am doing research on the light conditions that are indigenous to the fish I have and using that data to run the lights.
I also have all marine land LED lights but the blue LED's for the moon light is incorporated in the entire module.

At the moment I have modified it to use two power supplies one for the white led's and one for the blue.
and have them on separate timers.
and I used electrical tape with a small hole cut to adjust the brightness of the led's
Now the tank looks great and the fish and plants must be happy
they are giving me babies and the plants are flowering.

of marketing the controller after it is completed.

As far as reducing your current moonlights output have you tried using a light diffuser of some sort? In the past I have used a coffee filter to defuse the light from a camera flash maybe if you try putting one between your LEDs and the tank it might defuse the light enough so it is not as bright but still lets enough light through that you can still view the fish at night. Before you start doing crazy mods to your lights look around your house and see what you can find to dampen the lights a bit.

I also run my lights as follows:
Stock light 7am - 10pm
Dual T5HO Glo light 11am - 7pm
DIY Moonlights 10pm - 7am

Basically I have my tank lit 24 hours a day. I have done it this way for a long time and everything is going great. My plants grow like weeds and I have little to no algae.

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75 Gallon Planted

yep some times keeping it simple is better. but I am a engineer.

You can't help it if you have an urge to complicate things

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75 Gallon Planted

lol thanks everyone.
I decided to set it on top of my florescent light to where its covering two of the LEDs

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36 Gallon Saltwater reef tank
Ocellaris Clown, Scooter Dragonet, sandsifter star, Decorator crab, emerald crab, coralline snails, blue leg hermit crab, and horseshoe crab.
Zooad's and shrooms
40 pounds of Live sand, 20 pounds of LR