triggerfish1976
New member
I decided to do some experimenting and have changed my lighting from a metal halide/T-5 combo to 100% MH.
I had been running the MH/T-5 combo for the last year since the tank has been setup and I was getting decent growth and color but expectations were for more. I had been running a ½ chiller and it was having a hard time keeping up so I kept the T-5’s going in order to allow the chiller to keep up with the lighting temp. I also reaquascaped the tank and went to several island like formations which also lessened the amount of MH lighting that some of my SPS were getting. I noticed a huge drop off in growth and several of my SPS started either darkening up and a couple even bleached due to the drastic decrease in lighting. Because of this I felt like that it was time to upgrade my chiller and lighting.
I had a custom DIY 1 HP chiller built and installed and added two more 400 w metal halides to replace the T-5’s.
Here is a pic taken this last night with the extra MH’s and no T-5’s.
I am a tech junkie so I decided to try out two of the new Coralvue Lumen Bright reflectors. I had been running three of the square shaped Lumenmax reflectors and I must say that the Lumen Brights are much more efficient at directing the light beam whereas the square shaped reflectors given a better spread. I also like to go with different combos of M/H bulbs so I decided to run a mixture of Reeflux bulbs and Aquaconnects in order to maximize color and growth. The tank looks a bit off due to the various spectrums I am running but I am trying to figure out which bulb gives me the best results.Here are pics of the Lumen Bright reflectors:
Here is a digram of the current MH setup.
I plan on documenting how everything progresses with the new lighting scheme so stayed tuned.
I had been running the MH/T-5 combo for the last year since the tank has been setup and I was getting decent growth and color but expectations were for more. I had been running a ½ chiller and it was having a hard time keeping up so I kept the T-5’s going in order to allow the chiller to keep up with the lighting temp. I also reaquascaped the tank and went to several island like formations which also lessened the amount of MH lighting that some of my SPS were getting. I noticed a huge drop off in growth and several of my SPS started either darkening up and a couple even bleached due to the drastic decrease in lighting. Because of this I felt like that it was time to upgrade my chiller and lighting.
I had a custom DIY 1 HP chiller built and installed and added two more 400 w metal halides to replace the T-5’s.
Here is a pic taken this last night with the extra MH’s and no T-5’s.
I am a tech junkie so I decided to try out two of the new Coralvue Lumen Bright reflectors. I had been running three of the square shaped Lumenmax reflectors and I must say that the Lumen Brights are much more efficient at directing the light beam whereas the square shaped reflectors given a better spread. I also like to go with different combos of M/H bulbs so I decided to run a mixture of Reeflux bulbs and Aquaconnects in order to maximize color and growth. The tank looks a bit off due to the various spectrums I am running but I am trying to figure out which bulb gives me the best results.Here are pics of the Lumen Bright reflectors:
Here is a digram of the current MH setup.
I plan on documenting how everything progresses with the new lighting scheme so stayed tuned.
). Looks great and can't wait to see what the changes show.
