Time to buy bulbs

[rickh]

I currently have (3) 65 watt PC bulbs on my 37 gallon. The coral is doing great, but I would like to increase the "glow". I have 1 dual daylight, 1 dual actinic and 1 50:50 daylight actinic. Do you think I could replace a daylight and add more blue without reducing the coral growth?? Thanks

 

[Julio]

you will reduce coral growth if you do that no matter what, if you can see if you can get 12-15K bulbs in PC, but it will still decrease your growth, but it will giv eyou the desire look you want.

 

[rickh]

Over thirty people read this thread and the only person who responds has no knowledge of PC bulb types? RRRRRRRRRR

 

[jawaiianmon]

ask in the Coral forum. At least Julio was trying to help.

 

[dots]

I think it would matter the most on what kind of corals you have.

If one were to use the old "watts per gallon" rule, I personaly thought the actinics really didn't count much because I believe that old rule of thumb was really a measure of intensity of light.

Sooooo......If you have lower light corals like softies and zoos and they are known to flourish in less than intense lighting, then change out to two 50/50 and one daylight or all 50/50's. There are many tanks that have straight 50/50 from the get go and seem to run fine. It will probably be your little experiment that you can tell all of us.

I myself only use PC's for 100% actinics only and have "seen the light" of MH's and am not looking back. Perhaps if your that concerned with the color, you may want to step up to them where you would have more control over kelvin and color

 

[smleee]

Woah now, calm down. The PC gurus only come on during normal business hours.

No, you won't be able to reduce the daylight and get the same growth. My advice would be to replace that dual daylight bulb (that is a 6,700k and 10,000k right?) with a full 10k, that will lessen up the yellow a little bit. Keep the same dual actinic and the 50/50 (as long as the 50/50 uses 10k). You could always add another 65W actinic if you have space (or an actinic T5 which is really nice when space is tight - that is what I did). Other than that, I can't think of other options while keeping good growth.

eee

 

[rickh]

Thanks for the input, I didn't mean to be nasty. Internet forms are strange-dangerous places. You have to take all the advice with a grain of salt--thats important in the case of reef tanks People( not you Julio) will give advice, people will make decisions and spend large amounts of money on the advice of person who actually has no real knowledge of the subject. Advice on computer gaming forms is especially bad for this. Every 12 year old NEEDS a $500 video card. Sorry again. R