T5HO-Fluorescent Effect Requires Actinic Bulb?

[ahchung]

I am running 6 x 39W T5HO on my 45G tank with 3 x Aquablue Special and 3 x ATI Blue+ using 5 parabolic reflectors (due to space issues). Yesterday I bought an acropora which showed a very nice fluorescent green color under 400W of a 20K MH. Unfortunately when I brought the acropora back to home and put it in the tank it only showed yellow color and no fluorescent green color.

Actually this problem applies to most of the acroporas in my tank. The LFS's here are running either pure 400W of 20K MH bulbs or 400W of 14K/20K MH bulbs plus VHO actinic bulbs.

I just want to know whether I should replace some existing bulbs with Actinic bulbs in order to get the fluorescent effect?

Thanks in advance!

 

[jsweir]

T5 Actinic bulbs are very weak, you may get some fluorecence, but you will lose too much par. The best way is with VHOs - I use the Actinic + T5s but just get a little fluorescence

 

[damienkee]

i use all HO T5 (in white)
sub is (blue & actinic)

 

[Ti]

Go with a VHO super actinic