Lighting questions

onefish2fish

that fixture has halides and compacts most likely for the compacts to be actinic and to turn on first then the halides, kind of like simulating sunrise/sunset. i have low lights turn on 1 hour before my powerful lights and one hour after my powerful lights turn off if that makes sense because your not going to want full power lights then darkness or vice versa as you will shock things.

as for my opinion id say its a good fixture but im personally a retrofit t5 guy.

Kellsindell

It sounds like a winner. You would be strap to find a coral that wouldn't like this lighting. You'd have more issues with corals that need less light and you're giving too much , wouldn't that stink? too much light .

I agree with you. Call it a day and don't worry about the DIY, i love my MH and i wish i had some actinics, but you won't have that problem.

Ocarius

could i not have all the lights on at once, to lower watts?

Kellsindell

I suppose you could, but i think the best option would be to use the correct amount of daylight period. Don't run your lights more then 8hrs especially since you'll have so much wattage over them.

Also, be sure that when you do start getting corals, you either lower your photo-period to 4hrs and increase it by 2hrs every 5days or use multiple screens to cover the tank and every other day take one off. By doing this it'll keep you from cooking your corals and ultimately killing them. Not very many LFS will use good lighting over their corals. They normally use just enough.

Ocarius

Coral need light, this much I've got... and they need certain kinds of light.

So do MH lights alone offer the coral all they need to live? as you said you dont have actnic on your tank. So is actinic just to help with coral colors or is it a diffrent wave length.

One of my ongoing questions when Ive looked up these lamps is that some only have one type of light, so i would assume that it would be enough.

So what I want to know ultimatily is what advantage would i get from having the combination of MH 10k, the CF Actinic, and the Moonglow LED, compared to a person with just 10K?

onefish2fish

coral colors "pop" or "stand out" or "glow" under the actinic lighting.

if you want to speak "ultimately" you'll get more coral growth with 6500K then you will with 10,000K however algae seems to grow like wildfire along with it and the corals are dull as can be.

a 20,000K bulb will make corals look awesome but a 10,000K will have them grow faster and still look "ok" at the same time so thats a good medium, the addition of actinic just makes things "pop" more

hope that all makes sense.

Kellsindell

You also have to take into consideration the health of the corals. It comes into play when you talk spectrums. Yes, white 10,000k bulbs make things grow faster then something like my 14,000k bulbs, but without the supplimentation it takes a bit from the coral. Lights Continued should give you a better idea of what i mean.

Ocarius

Ok change of plans, how about this one;

Current USA 48 inch Outer Orbit 2x150w 10K HQI-MH w/ 4x54W T5 HO & 18 Lunar Lights


Its switching me from PC lights to T5's. I'm now wondering if this will give me the needed light, spetrum, colors to make my coral bright, happy, and thriving. The Watts are still up there, but again Im trying to get now, save later.

The lunar lights come up again as confusing as these have white and blue led lights.. so im not sure what the white would be for, as onefish mentioned they do need downtime.

So many questions, so little time!

Chris

Ocarius

Well?