The Great Blue Debate

[Reef Junkie]

Does your friend also have softies?
A lot of mixed tanks never really see some of the coloration on SPS that a pure or mostly SPS tank can get. When I say SPS, I mean a heavily skimmed (clean) tank.

The type of light isn't the only factor to coral coloration. If you don't clean your water like an SPS tank, then it's possible that your water is slightly yellow. Which effects the color the bulb looks like and the penetration of light.

Yet, if you keep your tank that clean, your zoas don't seem to thrive like they do in a not so clean tank.

It's a tough balancing act that few people can pull off, I am not one of them. My SPS are nice, but do not "pop" like some of my friends with amazing SPS tanks. Yet, their zoas don't grow as fast and their zoa coloration is kindof washed out.

 

[EvilMel]

Yeah so it's definitely possible that my tank is dirtier than his. Plus I have more soft corals than he does for sure. I seem to see sorta two extremes...tanks with great color and tanks with great growth. Balancing the two is tricky!

 

[Reef Junkie]

Mel,
That is so true, but I have seen a tank with a connected sump that has incredible SPS in the main display and excellent growth/color of zoas in a seperate (yet connected to the SPS system) container.
The owner uses a lot of skimming and also a carlson surge on the zoa tank.
It's truely a sight to behold.:eek1:

I am going to try and duplicate it as much as possible. I hope he doesn't read this, it's like admitting that he's got "the" tank.

Oh, and he has incredible growth from both SPS and zoas. He uses 10k xm's, I think. The real key are the Luminarcs.

Has anyone seen or read Sanjay's studies on the Luminarcs?

If not, here is one of the most comprehensive studies conducted on Reef lighting and reflectors, well, that I've read.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/mar2003/feature.htm

 

[mille239]

Surfnvb7, I second your nomination! I have tried 10k, 20k, and 15k XM's (all 250w SE) and the 15k is by far my favorite. Great compromise between color and growth. I also supplement with VHO.

 

[surfnvb7]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7252606#post7252606 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mille239
Surfnvb7, I second your nomination! I have tried 10k, 20k, and 15k XM's (all 250w SE) and the 15k is by far my favorite. Great compromise between color and growth. I also supplement with VHO.

yeah, i dont know what the deal with PAR and ppfd ratings are. all i know is that the XM 15k gave me incredible color, without a washed out blue look (like the XM 20k). don't get me wrong, i love the XM 20k, i just cant stand looking at blue sand. :lol: i thought i got decent growth out of my sps also. i'm not talking 10k equivalent growth obviously. maybe the fact that i was running them on a 175w MAGNETIC ballast had something to do with it. they were obviously being over driven. so they had a shorter life expectancy. but gave enough "umph" for the sps to grow well.

do most people run electronic ballasts? i guess that would explain why they didnt like them.

i'm still bummed out about this 175w iwasaki Aqua2 bulb. everything looks like crap. i'm sure the sps will color up eventually, but zoas looking washed out with no color is unnaceptable

ReefJunkie:
what type of ballast are you running your radium on? i was reading the thread in the sps forum about people using HQI ballasts on the radiums, but this decreases the bulbs effective life to about 6months before theres a drastic change in the spectrum.

i could never replace two $90 bulbs every 6months, but am thinking about doing a cube with a single bulb overdriven by the HQI ballast, and of course in a lumenarc reflector. that would make more sense to me.

my local club just did a "reef krawl" last night. we are in a small college town, so everyone lives within 5min of each other. i got to see some new T5 blue actinics. all i can say is WOW. i'm so getting rid of my super actinic VHO's for actinic T5's. they give off a true blue color. i came home, and noticed my VHO's really give off a purple color that i can't stand, it makes stuff look too artificial, and not a deep blue see look. also, one 36" actinic T5 was brighter than both of my 36" super actinic VHO's. craaaaaaaaazy :smokin:

 

[Shultz]

I was really pleased with the XM 15k's, but these don't run on electronic ballasts so when I changed from magnetics I had to change the bulbs

Tried various ones including BLV's & others & nothing looked right, even posted on here for help as the range of bulbs here in the UK is limited!

Settled on some Giesemann 20k's & love them! nowhere near as blue as some others, a nice colour, in fact I've left my 127w of PC actinics on the tank as well!

Cheers Shelton.

 

[Reef Junkie]

Surf,
Honestly, I forgot...
Yet, Sanjay was at my Reef Club a while back and he said that our MH bulbs last a lot longer then originally quoted. It's possible the original quotes of 6 months was stated to help increase sales.
Sanjay said "most" MH bulbs last 2 years before having to be replaced. He also stated that it's within the first 6 months that you lose the most amount of spectrum (I think), but after that the drop off is slow.

Anyone have that study done by Sanjay?

 

[gflat65]

surf,

How many shots are involved in a reef crawl?

 

[mille239]

Shultz: I have my XM 15k's on electronic ballasts with no problem. what ballasts did you switch to?

 

[surfnvb7]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7264612#post7264612 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Reef Junkie
Surf,
Honestly, I forgot...
Yet, Sanjay was at my Reef Club a while back and he said that our MH bulbs last a lot longer then originally quoted. It's possible the original quotes of 6 months was stated to help increase sales.
Sanjay said "most" MH bulbs last 2 years before having to be replaced. He also stated that it's within the first 6 months that you lose the most amount of spectrum (I think), but after that the drop off is slow.

Anyone have that study done by Sanjay?

reefjunkie, so how long before you change your radium bulb? any chance you can check the ballast? there should be a stamp somewhere on the ballast, that has a bunch of numbers on it. that would tell us if its electronic, pulse, or HQI. from my understanding radiums will not fire on standard magnetics.

 

[surfnvb7]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7264635#post7264635 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by gflat65
surf,

How many shots are involved in a reef crawl?

:lol: no shots, i think we are too old for that now. and that would impede our ability to actually get in our car to "krawl" to the next tank

but around here, reef keeping seems to be a synonomous hobby with microbrewing. so every stop we have to try a pint of the latest creation. why buy a 5lb CO2 cylinder for your calcium reactor when you can buy a 15lb cylinder and use it to power your calcium reactor and your fermentation? :lol:

 

[Reef Junkie]

Surf, I will have to look this weekend.
The tank is at the other house.

 

[smp]

So any divers have any input?

I have nothing to compare to except other people's tanks and up here in Toronto most people I've seen run 20k halides.
Personally, I moved from a really yellow look of 2 10k PCs and 1 actinic PC to a 175 watt SE 14k coralvue bulb on an icecap ballast and I couldn't be happier!
Things actually look white to me and everything pops WAY more than it did with the PCs. Lord, I hate PCs so much.

 

[Shultz]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7265055#post7265055 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mille239
Shultz: I have my XM 15k's on electronic ballasts with no problem. what ballasts did you switch to?

They are Osram ones here in the UK, I emailed XM directly about the problem & they told me that thier bulbs should not be used on electronic ballasts!

In fact it also states that on thier website.....

Cheers Shelton.

 

[surfnvb7]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7271310#post7271310 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Shultz
They are Osram ones here in the UK, I emailed XM directly about the problem & they told me that thier bulbs should not be used on electronic ballasts!

In fact it also states that on thier website.....

Cheers Shelton.

are you guys talking about DE bulbs? i'm assuming you have to run them on an HQI ballast if they are DE.

i was specifically talking about SE bulbs on electronic ballasts not being powerful enough. interesting...

 

[Reef Junkie]

Surf,
You're not gonna believe this, but Sanjay has proven that SE bulbs put out more par then DE bulbs. I don't have a link with the data, but that's straight from his mouth from a speech he held at our club. He basically concluded that DE bulbs use up more wattage and don't put out as much light. Go figure.

smp,
I dive, it's been a long time, but at 100 feet in Carriebean waters, it is very blue. At 30 feet, it's pretty white. Yet, at 100 feet there was still a lot of SPS corals growing all over the place. At 30 feet there was everything growing. I saw some really nice Protopalys in shallow water.

 

[surfnvb7]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7274232#post7274232 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Reef Junkie
Surf,
You're not gonna believe this, but Sanjay has proven that SE bulbs put out more par then DE bulbs. I don't have a link with the data, but that's straight from his mouth from a speech he held at our club. He basically concluded that DE bulbs use up more wattage and don't put out as much light. Go figure.

that kinda makes sense. i personally dont like DE b/c it focuses the light in a direct path (straight down), thus is really intense to stuff right below the bulb, but doesn't seem to spread out the light evenly over a given area (more reason to go to SE and get lumenarc reflectors), that and the UV glass thing. and they are more expensive :lol:

i'm not with the whole "PAR" thing. ppfd makes a little more sense to me, but not exactly sure why. i dont see how PAR, the use of photosynthetic available radiation can be a constant variable to all corals. if we go by the perception that corals take in energy from the sun, in a similar manner to plants......then we would have to deduct that since different types of plants, and different COLORS of plants prefer different types of radiation/light, then so do corals.

for example (a rough example, any botonists feel free to chime in here)....plants that look green, actually reflect green light, but they readily absorb red light. a red plant, reflects some red light and absorbs blue/green light. its essentially why the cells of a carrot look orange, as opposed to the cells of a leaf look green. something like that...

so, if the same is true for corals, it would mean that different types of corals and differently colored corals like different types of light. PAR is an average of photosynthetically available light (i.e. ALL visible light in ROYGBIV). but we know different types/colors of plants prefer different wavelengths of visible light, not just an "average" of ROYGBIV. you could have the same two averages, but in one instance have a very high value of 550nm, but in another instance have equal amounts of radiation at 450nm and 680nm. but both give the same "average".

hopefully my little sh-peal made some sense, my thinking could be totally wrong, i've just never seen an actual paper really be clear and concise as to what PAR and ppfd actually are. :lol:

 

[Azurel]

Sounds good to me....I only have used SE bulbs.

 

[Reef Junkie]

Surf,
I totally see where you're going with this and also know that we're probably a long way off (hopefully) before true designer bulbs are made. I imagine that once these bulb manufacturers start listening to the likes of Sanjay, they might read into his studies and find a new market. If it were possible to single out certain wavelengths for specific corals, you would then see Acropora and Zoanthid bulbs coming out. For now, us aquarists have to do all the work and figure out the "best" configuration for maximum aesthetics.

At the present moment, they are not even close. In fact, most of the bulbs manufactured today do not even give off the correct color temperature that they claim to. Some have a major part of their wavelengths in a kelvin temperature range that cannot even be seen by the human eye. This of course is more comments and conclusions from meeting with Sanjay. He's a great wealth of info when it comes to lighting.

FYI, I'm half in the bag and exhausted from work today. I barely could read everthing that you wrote and yet, you made perfect sense to me. You're crazy, like a fox.

cheers,

 

[MUCHO REEF]

It's a 2 year old topic, but I'd love to hear what you think today. Here's a copy from page one of this thread.

"The Great Blue Debate

Surely it's a matter of personal taste and aesthetic appeal, but how many of you prefer the 20 K Metal Halide look over 10 K , 12 K, 14 K and 15 K with or without actinics? "So why yah asking that one Mucho". Here's why. Of course many factors will determine growth, accelerated growth and appearance. Some prefer growth over appearance and vice versa, but some want both. Bulb type ( K value, Par, SE or DE), wattage and the ballast are the determining factors for achieving ones "personal taste and aesthetic appeal". We've all heard that 20 K's are just too blue, however the fluorescence is out of this world, especially when it comes to displaying ones zoanthid collection. "But it's not natural looking", is it? For all of you certified divers out there, answer this question. Is the sand white, light blue or 20 K blue? I know depth plays and important factor in coloration on the ocean floor, but the question remains. What do you guys/gals think?

Mucho




Mucho