Avast Marine
.Registered Member
I'm ready for a lighting change geared more for sps than I had originally planned.
I have been thinking for several weeks about this and done enough research to make my head hurt.
Heres where I am at:
Currently run a Outer Orbit HQI 150w 10k bulb and 2ea 55w pc dual actinics.
Tank is a 54 corner.
Water conditions as of this evening:
Sal: 1.025
Ph: 8.20
No3: 0
No2: 0
Po4: 0 - .01 (hard to tell)
Nh3: 0
Alk: 10 dkh
Ca: 400
Mg: 1280
Temp: 80.4
I can provide any additional tank info as needed.
Currently I keep SPS in the middle, and LPS at the bottom. Everything has good growth. The PAR is right around 50ish PPFD according to input data but, I have not verified this with a real test. The first post I made about this I stated that I wanted more color in the corals. The reality of the situation is the color I get in my sps is nice. I have had a Purple tip staghorn that I picked up a little browned out from a recent mini crash recolor very nice. Also I recieved a bottlebrush acro that looked great in the sps tank it was in with 20k lighting color up and look even better in my tank. I have a Green polyp birdsnest growing like crazy and retain every bit of the color it had while under 400w lighting. Red cap, purple rim cap, yellow slimer, green polyp staghorn and green milli all have good colors as well as growth. 6 decent size LPS all look good and flourece nicely. I have a nice collection of brown and tan digitata
. Ok so these digis are the only thing that has lost color rather than gained it in my system, oh and a tan milli as well.
I attribute most of the color and growth to the water quality and just enough light to keep em happy.
The problem is I WANT MORE. That 2 hour period after the main photo period of the tank when just the actinics are on is my favorite viewing time. I think it would be nice to have that 12 hours a day .
The 20k tanks I have seen make everything look oh so special and I think I want more blue. The t-5 lit sps tanks I have seen makes the corals look unbelievablly colorful, in fact they can make the colors look so intense they seem not to be real. Shimmer is important to me so I will be using halides.
Simply switching bulbs on this setup I believe will drop the par to a unacceptable level for growth.
I was origanally thinking of switching to a single 400w bulb in 14 - 20k range. I have been discouraged by too many to believe that this is the right solution.
This is the setup I am leaning towards right now:
24" PFO parallel reflector.
250w m58 or ARO electronic ballast
250w XM 20k se bulb.
Triad Ballast
2ea 24" GE T-5
I have not seen a tank lit like that but, according to some "experts" the 20k / 6500k combo hits all three color spectrums required for the differant zoox to thrive. This I will look into more but I also want your guys feed back and examples if you have them!
I have seen a couple examples of tanks lit with this combo except switching the 6500k to URI actinic whites and it looks really nice.
So wadda ya think SPS keepers?
I have been thinking for several weeks about this and done enough research to make my head hurt.
Heres where I am at:
Currently run a Outer Orbit HQI 150w 10k bulb and 2ea 55w pc dual actinics.
Tank is a 54 corner.
Water conditions as of this evening:
Sal: 1.025
Ph: 8.20
No3: 0
No2: 0
Po4: 0 - .01 (hard to tell)
Nh3: 0
Alk: 10 dkh
Ca: 400
Mg: 1280
Temp: 80.4
I can provide any additional tank info as needed.
Currently I keep SPS in the middle, and LPS at the bottom. Everything has good growth. The PAR is right around 50ish PPFD according to input data but, I have not verified this with a real test. The first post I made about this I stated that I wanted more color in the corals. The reality of the situation is the color I get in my sps is nice. I have had a Purple tip staghorn that I picked up a little browned out from a recent mini crash recolor very nice. Also I recieved a bottlebrush acro that looked great in the sps tank it was in with 20k lighting color up and look even better in my tank. I have a Green polyp birdsnest growing like crazy and retain every bit of the color it had while under 400w lighting. Red cap, purple rim cap, yellow slimer, green polyp staghorn and green milli all have good colors as well as growth. 6 decent size LPS all look good and flourece nicely. I have a nice collection of brown and tan digitata
. Ok so these digis are the only thing that has lost color rather than gained it in my system, oh and a tan milli as well.I attribute most of the color and growth to the water quality and just enough light to keep em happy.
The problem is I WANT MORE
. That 2 hour period after the main photo period of the tank when just the actinics are on is my favorite viewing time. I think it would be nice to have that 12 hours a day .The 20k tanks I have seen make everything look oh so special and I think I want more blue. The t-5 lit sps tanks I have seen makes the corals look unbelievablly colorful, in fact they can make the colors look so intense they seem not to be real. Shimmer is important to me so I will be using halides.
Simply switching bulbs on this setup I believe will drop the par to a unacceptable level for growth.
I was origanally thinking of switching to a single 400w bulb in 14 - 20k range. I have been discouraged by too many to believe that this is the right solution.
This is the setup I am leaning towards right now:
24" PFO parallel reflector.
250w m58 or ARO electronic ballast
250w XM 20k se bulb.
Triad Ballast
2ea 24" GE T-5
I have not seen a tank lit like that but, according to some "experts" the 20k / 6500k combo hits all three color spectrums required for the differant zoox to thrive. This I will look into more but I also want your guys feed back and examples if you have them!
I have seen a couple examples of tanks lit with this combo except switching the 6500k to URI actinic whites and it looks really nice.
So wadda ya think SPS keepers?
