love 14K halides but no growth!

[Drake1]

i love the look of my 14k halides but i have never gotten any noticable growth from my corals with them. just curious to see if other have or how you got around that problem. i run 3 175w bulbs in my 125 gallon

 

[ALTI]

i got growth with mine, but alot less than i had with the 10k's.

 

[MiddletonMark]

Which 14k's? Some are much lower PAR than others ...

But in general, while aesthetically appealing, the blue bulbs generally provide a lot less photons to the corals.

 

[Drake1]

i was using hamiltons but was thinking of trying the 14k from oceanencounter.com since there $18 cheaper. i would go back to 10k but the wife hates them and it is the center peice of our house, maybe the 6500k above the 14ks would help without changing the color
jeff

 

[MiddletonMark]

What brand of bulbs?

 

[BillnJennh]

I'm using 14K XM's and am very happy with growth. I've saw a monti put on a quarter inch of growth in about 3 weeks, a frogspawn split several heads, and I have a neon trumpet that is splitting again for the second time in 3 weeks. I'm really not sure about the par of these bulbs, but I like the color and the growth that I'm getting.

 

[MiddletonMark]

If 175's, this article is about all I know that has intensity information for bulbs - and while I have no idea about the look/etc, the Iwasaki 14k [last one] sure seems intriguing ... kind of a crazy blue spike, but quite good PPFD.
Might not be out yet, I dunno.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2005/12/review

Just figure out what kind of ballast yours is, or is similar to, and check the bulbs from there. [often vary ballast to ballast in terms of color, intensity]