T5s not giving pop....

[leviburns89]

So I am running 4 t5 bulbs.
2 ati Blu plus
1 true actinic
1 ati coral plus

Everything looks good, not great.

Here's my issue,

I was at a local dealers house, and his corals looked like a pink Floyd acid trip, so I bought some. He was running 6 bulb ballasts, 4 blue plus, 2 actinic.

As soon as I got the corals home under my current lighting, they look "good" but nothing close to what they looked like in his tank.

I have the option of adding 2 more bulbs, so the question is, would adding 1 more actinic, and swapping out the coral plus for another Blu plus give me that pop?

I wish actinic could grow corals, they look like space aliens under them.

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[leviburns89]

Ideas? Advice? Personal experiences?

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[Dkuhlmann]

A lot has to do with the brand of bulbs you're using. I found that out the hard way.

 

[Chibils]

Swapping the coral plus for an actinic would give you that pop at the expense of some growth. As well as seeing the natural coloration of your corals. I don't know if your light has one or two channels (can you cut off half the lights at a time?) but if so you can put your actinics in one channel and your Blue+ and Coral+ on the other channel. It would allow you to switch to actinic only when you wanted to see the "space alien" look.

A lot of vendors use heavy blue saturation and actinics to make their corals look more colorful than they really are. Nowhere in the ocean will you find those shades of blue light. It's true that light gets bluer as you go deeper, but not like that. I personally don't like the super-blue lighting and actinic look, but it's your lights and your tank and your corals and I think you should be able to light them however you want. So... Being able to turn off the Coral+ and/or adding more actinics will definitely get you that look.

Using ATI and Geisemann bulbs will also help, as they're the best bulbs across the board.

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[leviburns89]

I only run ATI. And I will be adding 2 additional channels for actinic. So my lighting sched will look like:

7am-9am - actinic
9am-6pm - coral+blue+
6pm-9pm- actinic

I also found out when the guy had me over to look at the corals, he was just running the actinics. So that's why it looked insane.

I too don't like how heavy the blue of actinics are. I wish there was a way to make the corals flouresce like that, without making my den look like a Blu man group concert.
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