rtparty
Raise The Reef!
The purple is very overpowering and the coral plus bulbs add plenty of white. An aquablue added will make it around 12k
The T5 Q&a Thread - split
- Thread starter eagle9252
- Start date
The purple is very overpowering and the coral plus bulbs add plenty of white. An aquablue added will make it around 12k
88rxna
New member
i would like to see if i can get a little better "pop" in color of my corals.
here is my current setup:
1. blue plus (day)
2. blue plus (acintic)
3. aqua blue special (day)
4.blue plus (acintic)
5.purple plus (day)
6. blue plusm (day)
all ATI bulbs
its alot of blue and wondered if a little more purple would do the trick?
here is my current setup:
1. blue plus (day)
2. blue plus (acintic)
3. aqua blue special (day)
4.blue plus (acintic)
5.purple plus (day)
6. blue plusm (day)
all ATI bulbs
its alot of blue and wondered if a little more purple would do the trick?
Last edited:
Skynyrd Fish
Member
Should I get ride of my Current 8 bulb single reflector fixture for a ATI 6 bulb? My tank is a 125 g 60"x18"x24". Im Growing sps nicely and will be adding more. I found a great deal on a used fixture 3 miles from my house. Thanks as always Dan.
rtparty
Raise The Reef!
Try a purple plus in place of the aquablue or add an actinic for less pink.
Yes, without a doubt. Don't fry your critters on the switch.
If you want slight purple I would try 5 blue plus and 3 purple plus. Grab a coral plus to play with as well.
Skynyrd Fish
Member
Ok I got the ATI 6 bulb fixture. He ran it with the shield off in a canopy. The reflectors are pitted and have salt spray. I wiped them down with a damp cloth. What can I polish them with? They're not wasted but every bit of polished helps.
TropTrea
New member
Alumnium reflectors can be polished to an extrem mirror finish. However they are made of an extremly soft metal and therefore it requires a lot of special super fine abrasives to get then polished to that extent. Basicly a lambs wool buffer will work with some super fine grit polishing rouge. Even atandard automotive polishing compounds are much to abrasive for alumnium.
rtparty
Raise The Reef!
In all honesty, it isn't worth the effort. I've seen it done before and the PAR increase was minimal.
If you are truly worried, just buy new reflectors from Reefgeek.
Michigan Mike
Freedom costs a buckofive
If they are pitted but clean it still won't make much of a difference compared to new reflectors, as long as they are clean and your splash shield is clean I wouldn't bother.
Grim changed old pitted reflectors for new ones and got squat for an increase in PAR.
I've heard mother's automotive polish but I'd just use water and maybe a touch of vinegar, use a lint free glasses-lens cloth.
Skynyrd Fish
Member
I tried some mothers power metal aluminum polish. It may have been too harsh. I only did two reflectors. It made them better. Thanx for your advice/info.
TropTrea
New member
Years ago when Compacts were being pushed by the manufacturers there were some articles on reflector effeciency. There are basicly two things that make a lit of difference and those are the actual shape of the reflector and the amount that they reflect.
If you remember to old cheap fixtures with white plastic reflectors they produced less than half the usable light as some of the top designed german polished alumnium reflectors. But just going a few months with salt creep on thios reflectors without proper cleaning showed considerable lose, being them in line with some of the cheaper polished reflectors.
In my book the reflector design is one of the biggest things that seperate the best light fixtures from some of the average ones costing half as much. It is also one of the big advantages of the T-5 over the T-8 with more space allowed for better reflectors.
rtparty
Raise The Reef!
I never said otherwise. Grim and others have changed out old, pitted and stained reflectors with no increase in PAR.
Sent from my Galaxy S3
Michigan Mike
Freedom costs a buckofive
Oops I missed your question.
I would use both channels together, but I you want it to look extra realistic - switch on channel #2(the rear 2 blue plus) then switch on #1 (the front blue & purple) then the middle 4 bulbs.
@ night is the opposite - turn off the middle 4 bulbs first, then the blue & purple combo, finally the reminding 2 blue plus bulbs.
What ballast do you recommend. Back in 08 or 09, IceCaps were the cat's meow. I did have problems with the ATI purple+ bulbs, I went through 4 or 5 of them in a row, maybe 10 minutes of use per bulb.
rtparty
Raise The Reef!
For bluer, replace the Coral Plus with an Actinic or Blue Plus. The actinic gets my vote. I will explain more later when I post my recent observations with my current combo.
For whiter, change a Blue Plus for another Coral Plus or change the Coral Plus to a GE 6500k for a a larger shift towards white.
Standard T5 ballasts. The ATI ballasts are my favorite. Reefgeek carries them.
Skynyrd Fish
Member
Back to the reflectors. They are Silver coated aluminum. Do not use aluminum polish it can strip the silver. I used the above recomended water and vinager and scrubed for a while.Then I finished them off with silver polish. Where they were not damaged from pitting they look like new. Im glad I thought of silver polish, because I just learned they are silver coated and did them last night. I am going to pick up a couple new reflectors from reef geek in the future. I just feel like 3 of them are pitted enough that I would replace them.
TropTrea
New member
I realy doubt you will want it any bluer. The Coral plus is basicly the Bluest full spectrum bulb you can get. If you pull this one you will basicly have an all blue tank.
If it is too blue then the replacemet of the Coral Plus with a whiter bulb would work. The Aqua Blue special is the next step in a whiter Bulb that still has a considerable amount of blue in it. Then if you want to drasticly brighten things up the GE 6,500K is the flatest full spectrum light you can find.
rtparty
Raise The Reef!
So I just wanted to post some recent observations I have made with my own tank. What I am about to say isn't anything special or unknown. It isn't groundbreaking by any means either. Just different then what we/I repeat day in and day out.
I'm currently running my Sunpower over a 24g tank and it is total overkill. Like I'm bleaching sps on the bottom and have cut my photo period way down. I added an actinic a few weeks ago to help lower PAR but it hasn't helped a ton even. It is helping but not quite enough.
So I decided to only run all 6 bulbs for two hours and then run a two bulb dusk/ dawn for eight hours total. I went with my standard blue and purple plus combo but didn't love it. So I tried two blue plus (haven't run this in years) and hated it. Like I truly hated it. I lost colors in almost everything. I had some good fluorescence but not great. This is when it all hit me!
I put the actinic on with a blue and found it to be awesome. But I noticed the lack of color in everything under the blue. Switch bulbs around and put the actinic in back and same story. The back corals came to life while the front looked bad. Do I have a bad blue bulb maybe? It looks very green to me overall. Like in all honesty the peak is around 480nm not 454nm. I have three other blues to try so I try them all, same results. When did the blue plus become so green??? My old blue plus bulbs were always much deeper blue overall.
So here are my thoughts overall. I may get flamed as some of them are a total 180 from my old thinking.
1) blue light is amazing but we are over emphasizing it. I want more violet-blue light in my tanks.
2) the aquablue bulb isn't nearly as bad as I once thought. I actually enjoy it in my daylight hours to see some true color in my sps.
3) those of us with good T5 fixtures can sacrifice some PAR and run actinics. On my 6 bulb fixture I plan to run at least 2 pure actinic bulbs and then 4 high PAR bulbs. I hope to upgrade to an 8 bulb fixture actually for my new 60g cube. I will run 3 at that point.
Fluorescence is great and all but I find myself enjoying the true colors in my corals and then letting them fluoresce later in the day with a couple actinics. I have an sps colony in my tank that has gorgeous purple tips in the sun but when my lighting comes on, I see baby blue tips and a purplish body. During the day I like to see that purple stand out.
Again, nothing here is new or unprecedented. Just my new opinion. I like pastel colors as well, as my new tank will be all zeovit. I feel I will have better coloring by using more violet light. I'm also on the quest to find a better blue bulb. I want a deeper blue but not violet bulb. I doubt it is available but I will look.
Ryan
I'm currently running my Sunpower over a 24g tank and it is total overkill. Like I'm bleaching sps on the bottom and have cut my photo period way down. I added an actinic a few weeks ago to help lower PAR but it hasn't helped a ton even. It is helping but not quite enough.
So I decided to only run all 6 bulbs for two hours and then run a two bulb dusk/ dawn for eight hours total. I went with my standard blue and purple plus combo but didn't love it. So I tried two blue plus (haven't run this in years) and hated it. Like I truly hated it. I lost colors in almost everything. I had some good fluorescence but not great. This is when it all hit me!
I put the actinic on with a blue and found it to be awesome. But I noticed the lack of color in everything under the blue. Switch bulbs around and put the actinic in back and same story. The back corals came to life while the front looked bad. Do I have a bad blue bulb maybe? It looks very green to me overall. Like in all honesty the peak is around 480nm not 454nm. I have three other blues to try so I try them all, same results. When did the blue plus become so green??? My old blue plus bulbs were always much deeper blue overall.
So here are my thoughts overall. I may get flamed as some of them are a total 180 from my old thinking.
1) blue light is amazing but we are over emphasizing it. I want more violet-blue light in my tanks.
2) the aquablue bulb isn't nearly as bad as I once thought. I actually enjoy it in my daylight hours to see some true color in my sps.
3) those of us with good T5 fixtures can sacrifice some PAR and run actinics. On my 6 bulb fixture I plan to run at least 2 pure actinic bulbs and then 4 high PAR bulbs. I hope to upgrade to an 8 bulb fixture actually for my new 60g cube. I will run 3 at that point.
Fluorescence is great and all but I find myself enjoying the true colors in my corals and then letting them fluoresce later in the day with a couple actinics. I have an sps colony in my tank that has gorgeous purple tips in the sun but when my lighting comes on, I see baby blue tips and a purplish body. During the day I like to see that purple stand out.
Again, nothing here is new or unprecedented. Just my new opinion. I like pastel colors as well, as my new tank will be all zeovit. I feel I will have better coloring by using more violet light. I'm also on the quest to find a better blue bulb. I want a deeper blue but not violet bulb. I doubt it is available but I will look.
Ryan
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