Actinic coral growth?

[MBryant]

I recently switch some of my t5 lights around mainly bc it's time to buy new bulbs and I had some actinics bulbs in my spare parts so I went ahead and put them in my fixture. I used to run two 48" 12k and one 36" 10k for daylights and two 48" actinic plus with one 36" 420nm actinic. Well I didn't have enough money at the time to go out and buy all new bulbs so I just pulled out one of the 48" 12k and one of the 36" 10k and replaced it with more actinic plus and a another 36" 420nm So now I have only one daylight and the rest is all actinic. It looks great but I'm sure I lost some growth from doing this. Now I have heard that corals will grow under actinic but there mainly for color. Anyone have any ideas??? But man it looks awesome. Lol very BLUE. Lmao

 

[cjilge]

depends on the bulb, ati blue + are very blue and have an incredible amount of par, I run 3 blue +, 2 ati aqua blue special, and an ATI procolor red bulb. get good color and growth, I to would like a little more blue and will be ordering a few blue leds for this. check out the t5 thread and post a question to grimmreefer with what color look you want and he can tell you from testing which bulbs to run and in what order.

 

[kender]

What size bulb are you needing? I have 48" bulbs here and I have some spares that are brand new.

 

[MBryant]

there t5's

 

[pwhitby]

corals grow fine under actinics.

I generally run 3:1 actinic (and blue) to white

I get good growth,

P.

 

[cjilge]

corals grow fine under actinics.

I generally run 3:1 actinic (and blue) to white

I get good growth,

P.

"Good growth" is putting it mildly!

 

[Mylilreef]

when i was battling my hair algae i cut out all daylight or white light for a couple of months to slow down growth and keep it from choking out everything. gets kind of boring looking at a tank with only actinics, but it helped out and the corals that didn't already get smothered did just fine.