lighting ?

champ54

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I need help in deciding on and understanding my lighting ....right now I have a 185 reef tank with 3 175W 10000K Hamilton bulbs and 2 96W actinic PCs

I'm thinking of going to a bluer 175W 14000K bulbs....with them would I still need to use actinic PCs for my anemones?

Does anyone have a definate preference of a 10000K or a 14000K bulb?

Thanks in advance for any help...
Linda
 
Im not quite sure where the actinic is coming into account for the anemones since they are photosynthetic and actinic supplment has very little benefit for that....Here is what I will say tho. You currently have 3.87 watts per gallon so I would doubt you could do anything more than softies and a few LPS. A 10K bulb will give you much better light output and better par readings than a 14k bulb because the spectrum shift changes. Any divers on here will tell you that bright vibrant colors of coral and the "actinic" affect in the ocean is caused by the fact that as you go down deeper in the water, the amount of light penetrating decreases and does so in a certain order of the spectrum. The first color to be lost is red and goes all the way down the rainbow in order. So when you are down a little lower you are seeing a more and more blue light.....but I digress.

-A 10k bulb peaks out at 420nm with a spectral irradiance (amount of power of electromagnetic radiation in a unit of area) of .29 and at 545nm with a spec irrad of .13.
-A 14k bulb peaks at 420nm peaks at .34 and 545nm the spec irrad drops to .06.

What this all means is that the intensity of white light will be much less with a 14k bulb than with a 10k bulb. Since you have a 185 im not sure how deep that tank is but I would definatly stick with 10k bulbs because the amount of light you will have the deeper you go will be much better with a 10k bulb than a 14k and you wont be limited on how low you can put corals. I have two suggestions,

1) Go with a whiter 14k bulb (talk to Sam at aqua buys, he will be able to suggest one) because every company has a slightly different spectrum on it.
2) Lose the 96w pc and go with HO T-5's if you want more actinic. HO T-5's will kick pc's any day in the amount of output. This way you can get the same output from a 10k but then will have a bluer look.

I hope this helps.

omg i was about to say that

JP
 
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