Lighting?
 

This might be in the wrong area to post in, but wanted to ask....

Do corals need Actinic lighting or would you go with just straight 10,000 K in a power compact lighting system?

Corals do not need Actinic lighting to grow. The atinic lighting is meant to offset the overly yellow appearance of the 10000k spectrum of light. Simply put, corals will look poor under 10000k lighting alone. Another common solution to the absence of actinic supplementation is the use of a higher spectrum bulb. 15000k or 20000k bulbs will povide a nicer look, but coral growth is sacrificed as result.

Thank You for answering my question...

you're welcome

best w/ 50/50 or 20000k supplemented w/ 260nm actinic

i disagree and 20,000k will be blue enough you wont need to use the actinics.

20k is pretty blue. I have 2 20k halides and was running 2 VHO 50/50s. I swapped the 50/50s out last week to 2 actinic and it's definitely BLUE. Everything glows but I think I'll change my halides now to 14k or 10ks.

yea with the 20ks you dont really need the extra actinics but ultimately the color of the tank is a personal pref. but they do come in handy as "warm up lights" to come on before the halides turn on and after they turn off.