What Anemone is this?

[Ohponies]

You can't count actinic bulbs for this either, as the light for them isn't useful for growth.

What about 50/50 420/460nm? According to Aquaticlife who makes my 4 54 t-5 fixture the 50/50 it is ideal for anemones. http://www.aquaticlife.com/lamps/index.html

 

[bradleym]

If you read the description of the benefits for each color, you will see that the first 2 colors have wavelengths useful for plant growth. This is the same wavelength as used by zoxanthellae. Unfortunately, it's also really good for nuisance algae.

The third one, "ardent white" or 10,000K, says it "caters to the biological requirements" of your livestock. Obviously, growth and health. This what I would recommend as it causes healthy growth with the least amount of nuisance algae and browning effect on corals.

As for the last one, "actinic & bue", it says that it benefits corals and enhances colors in fish. But it doesn't actually say HOW it benefits them. What it does is it causes the corals to turn some REALLY cool colors that wouldn't have shown up under normal lighting. The skin of the coral reacts to that wavelength, kind of like how our skin reacts to sunlight by tanning.

I have some brown palythoas growing great under 10,000K lighting that will turn neon green after a week in my display tank which has an abundance of actinic light.

 

[bradleym]

I think Kp is saying he has a 4 bulb fixture. And Kp, as I and others have said, losing the actinic and going with another bulb is in order. An ATI Aquablue plus would be a good choice for high PAR and still a blue look. I would suggest you also move to a larger tank whenever possible. Perhaps you could use the 20 gallon as a sump, since it's well established, set up a larger tank, like a 40g or at least a 30 gallon, and transfer the occupants of the tank to the display.

Sorry, I was doing the math for white bulbs only. Currently, if 2 bulbs are white then 24w x 2 bulbs = 48 watts white light

And the second part was if he changed out one bulb to white. 24w x 3 bulbs = 72 watts (white light)

Sometimes I guess I just expect people to live inside my head and hear the rest of the story, lol.

 

[bradleym]

Here's a really good read on lighting IMO:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-12/newbie/index.php

And for those who don't really care about most of it, here's the part I'm looking at:

In aquarium lighting we are interested mainly in lighting in the 6000-14,000K range, going from sunlight-white to a bluish white. This is the area where photosynthesis peaks. Both fluorescents and MH bulbs are available in K values of 20,000 and higher. Beware, however; not only do they appear dim to our eyes, which are not as sensitive to these high K values as they are to lower ones, but their true lumen output is usually much lower than their smaller K value counterparts. Now for a small nano tank, the choice is somewhat limited because we can mount only a single light over the tank. Here some compromise is needed, so bulbs with a higher K value need to be used in order to provide the blue-violet wavelengths required for photosynthesis. In those cases, 12,000-14,000°K bulbs are probably in order. Also, some PC tubes come with one side producing a fairly modest K white light and the other side generating a nearly actinic spectrum. I have been mentioning actinic in this thread, and it needs some explaining. Actinic itself means light that promotes a chemical reaction. In the 1980s fluorescent tubes started to appear that were just above the wavelength of “black lights.” They produced light in the area of 420-450 nm, and that happens to be a wavelength relished by photosynthetic algae. It quickly became apparent that these lights could be useful in aquariums, and especially marine tanks, where such a light would possibly enable aquarists to successfully maintain corals. That they did, and they were one of the innovations that have made reefkeeping possible.

With some setups, you can almost use actinics or 20,000K MH with no white light at all. However it would need to be a RIDICULOUS amount of light to create enough PAR for growth. I had a friend use 3 250w bulbs on his tank using 14,000K light. When he switched to 20,000K he had to use 4 400w bulbs on the same tank. Most people just aren't that into blue.