10001110101;622089 wrote: if you want more blue, ATI Blue +
really, you probably don't want "true actinics" or "actinic 03" because this is actually a purple bulb, and fairly dim in comparison the blue bulbs.
the word actinic gets thrown around for any bulb that looks blue or purple to the eyes, but really it's referring to the purple bulb, which is an outdated bulb in my opinion. so for a solid blue bulb that will give you a great deal of fluorescence (much more than a true actinic, especially for non-green fluorescent pigments) go with the ATI Blue+... it's probably, for what it is, the absolute best T5 bulb period... throw it in a fixture with any 10k, 12k, 14k, or even 20k bulb and you can't get a better overall color in your tank.
cuts out the yellow, amazing fluorescence, and it has more PAR than your average 10k T5 to boot.
the only real advantage to using a 420nm (true actinic, 'purple') bulb to me is MAYBE your greens fluoresce a little more, to my eyes there is no truth in this, but many people say that it gives more fluorescence particularly green... but in my experience the blue bulb will give you considerably more fluorescence of every color, particularly yellows, oranges and reds which just barely fluoresce under true actinics IME.
you could also just run a pair of UVL super actinics (purple) and a pair of ATI Blue+ and you get a little of both. I don't like the purple light though, gives the tank an artificial and dingy look IMO, but with 1/2 blue and 1/2 true actinic supplementation it's a nice compromise.
Edit:
radium does make a DE bulb, but it's only a 150w, so yeah, still no go.
