Alright, enough of the disclaimer mumbojumbo! I, along with quite a few others have employed Marineland's Double Bright L.E.D setup for my Malawi tank. While the lighting is great, both day and moonlight settings, I wasn't very impressed with the fact that you had to manually switch between settings. Now obviously if you can afford to do so, there are a plentiful amount of products that allow customizable lighting, dimming and spectrum setting. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I am not able to afford such luxuries. Which is why I set out to incorporate my idea's into Marineland's Double Bright L.E.D, which are INDIVIDUAL POWER SOURCES, for both the white and blue L.E.D's which allows one to place each function on its own TIMER. Thus resulting in NO MORE ON'Y OFF'Y
I know most people would be skeptical in doing this project, mostly because of the upfront cost of the light itself. Now luckily for me I was able to get my ML D B L.E.D (marineland double bright L.E.D) for about 90% below cost from a LFS that sadly went out of business in my area. So, if you are willing to embark, you may find this DIY helpful.
Supplies List from Radio Shack
-Size K coaxial DC power jack (p# 274-1565 $2.99 2pk)
-Enercell Universal 1000mA AC adapter (p#273-316 $19.99)
-Enercell size K adapt-a-plug (p# 273-342 is free w/ purchase of adaptor)
-Roughly 12" of 14-16 gauge wire.
-Soldering set ($20.00 tops at Lowe's/ home depot)
Step 1:
1a: Remove clear L.E.D beam guides from bottom of housing, as cover will not clear L.E.D's when slid off, unless removed (pry gently with very small flat head screw driver).
1b: Open the L.E.D housing, via 2 screws at each end (when removing end caps, be careful not to lose little white plastic casters, used for arms of fixture to slide through).
1c: Now that you have exposed the board itself, take a minute to figure out how the IC board is laid out (pretty simple, if you don't over-think it like I did at first). **Do not wipe off white Di-electric grease from between IC board and light housing, as it insulates the L.E.D's from contacting the metal of the housing**
1d: Remove all 18 insulated screws holding L.E.D's in place (this will be necessary to route ground wire for added power input jack to the backside of the IC board).
Step 2: (REFERNCE THE ILLUSTRATION FOR CLARITY OF INSTRUCTIONS)
2a: At this stage you should have easy access to the inner portion of the toggle switch and power supply input.
2b: At this point you are no longer going to need the 3 function toggle switch. The factory installed power supply input jack is going to operate the white L.E.D's, while the power supply input jack that you add will operate the blue L.E.D's. So, you will do the following:
- Remove the red 12v wire that supplies power to the switch from the power supply input jack (reference illustration).
- Remove red 12v wire attached to toggle switch and solder this end on to 12v tab of power supply jack (reference illustration).
-Nothing needs to be done to the black -/ground wire as it was the ground for the entire circuit, but will now function only as ground for white L.E.D's.
2c: Choose your mounting point for the additional power supply jack that you are about to install (I chose to use the case from the toggle switch, along with a couple of very small metal brackets, to hold it in place). Whatever method you choose, make sure that it is secure, as you do not want the power supply jack pulling free 6 months down the road.
2d: Now that you have your additional power supply jack mounted, you can take the green 12v wire, for the blue L.E.D's and while the one end is still soldered to the IC board, the loose end can be soldered to the 12v tab of the power supply input jack that you just mounted. (reference illustration)
2e: This is the step where you will use that 12" 14-16 gauge wire. Take and solder one end to the -/ground tab of the power supply input jack and with the other end, run it along the backside of the IC board to the unused -/ground eyelet on the opposite side of the board.
2f: Tada you're done, well that is if you don't mind the blue L.E.D's being on all of the time. I on the other hand wanted to get a bit longer life from the blue L.E.D's and attaining that goal was very easy.
- Right were the 12v/power and -/ground wires are closest to the first blue L.E.D, you will see a very small translucent orange-ish bridge connector, that when power is supplied to the white L.E.D's will also result in power being sent to the blue L.E.D's.
- In order to stop that from happening, all that you need to do is A.) Remove the bridge connector, or simply un-solder one (1) end of the connector to break the circuit and viola white's come on without blue's.
2g: At this point you are ready to connect your Ennercell 12v 1000mA adapter to the blue L.E.D's (making sure to align the size K adapt-a-plug to positive tip polarity, which is very important, but the box for the adapter explains this plainly).
2h: Now the ENTIRE reason I wanted to complete this project was to be able to have the lights set to a timer. This part is easy, go to your nearest home improvement store and by 1 very expensive multi-capability timer ($49-$59) or buy 2 fairly inexpensive digital timers ($14.99 from Lowe's).
-Now what I did, which kind of comes without saying is, for the white L.E.D's, depending on when the sun rises and sets in your area, set them to come on at 8:45am and then set them to go off at 8:45pm.
-Now for the blue L.E.D's, since dimming a diode that only runs on about 3 to 4 max volts each is another project in itself, I decided to just stagger the time's in which the white and blue L.E.D's come on and go off. So, abrupt as it may be when the lights come and go, at least there will be consistency when that happens. For instance, your white's are set to come on at 8:30am and go off at 8:30pm, then set your blue's to to come on at 8:29pm and go off at 8:31am.
So, for those of you that stuck with me through all of the above and were able to complete the task without destroying one of the most expensive features on your tank, Congrats. I think you'll enjoy the ease of operation your L.E.D's now have, I know I did.
Again this was my first DIY post, so I apologize if it is crude in any way, shape or form, but my intention was to post a how-to in order to help all who were frustrated with the primitive functionality of such a modern device.
I guess I could take 3 steps or maybe read a sentence from a book 
