Solar Power On Fluorescent Lighting

[Snick]

Hi,

I have ventilation problem in my aquarium, so I decided to put in some fans on the top of the aquarium lids.
The aquarium has 3 lids, all completely retractable. Imagine them like simple panels of wood on top of the glass.
Under the lids, there are 2, 30 watt fluorescent lights, and I was wondering weather I can use these solar powered
fans using electricity from the bulbs.
The benefit of this will be that I will not have to make the lids part of the aquarium, and still be able to take them off
completely, as the fans will not need to have cables run off the lid to a power source.
I will make holes in the lids to place the fans in them, so that air goes out through them.
I know this isn't a forum where people might know this, but it never hurts to give it a try.

Thanks for your help and time.

 

[SkiFletch]

My educated guess would be no. Flourescent bulbs create nowhere NEAR the amount of light that the sun does. I base that guess on the following. My local reef club has a PAR meter which measures the amount of photosynthetically available radiation where it is placed. Useful to measure the effectiveness of lighting systems. When placed within inches from one of my 175watt metal halides, the PAR meter reads ~900 microeinstiens. When I take the meter outside and just point it straight up (towards the sun) it pegs at 5000 microeinstiens (its maximum) and is probably far beyond that. Just gives you an idea of how much more powerful the sun is than even high-powered lighting. I'd doubt solar powered fans could get enough energy from flourescents.

But hey, prove me wrong, it does work for calculators. I'd be curious to see if it did work

 

[Rooster]

I'd put money on that they WOULD work ! I got a solar shed light last week, and ran the battery down "playing" as the missis calls it ! I held the solar panel upto our halogen room lamps.... nothing, then I tried it inside an aquarium hood, and POW lamps came on almost instantly ! (Not only charging the battery)
So I would say its an ideal environment... in fact I have toyed with the idea of getting some cheap solar garden lights, to provide "free" moon lighting.