Actinic Light Effect?

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360º

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
May 25, 2010
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Location
Edmonton Alberta
would it be possible for me to just tint the lens on my fixture blue to get the effect of actinic lights.

the bulbs here seem to be more expensive then the 10000k
 
most of the bulbs we use in the hobby are full spectrum lamps. the 10k you have has some blue light in it, as well as red.
what i am saying is you don't need actinic supplement. people want it for aesthetics mostly.

what kind of lamp are you looking for? i have some misc. used halide bulbs laying around.
 
I personally think you need the actinic lighting but as Doug said it`s in the actinic white or 50/50 bulbs already. I run two super actinic and two 50/50 bulbs on my tank.
 
its a 4 foot t5 light.

the bulbs are 46" i think

but if the blue light that is given off is only for aesthetics reasons, why cant i just tint the light cover blue?
 
Because it won't give you the effect you're looking for.

"Daylight" bulbs (including the 10000k) have a wide spectrum (wavelength) of light coming out of them. Some of this light includes the light in the 420-460 nm range... which is the normal "actinic" range.

An "Actinic" bulb focuses pretty much all of its light in that 420-460 nm range. You are getting way more energy in that actinic range with a pure actinic bulb than you are with a daylight bulb. This extra energy (I know... it's probably the wrong scientific verbage, but bear with me) is what makes the corals "pop", or fluoresce.

Your daylight bulbs are indeed giving off light in the actinic range, but just not enough to really make the corals fluoresce. Putting a filter on the light is going to turn the light blue, but it's not going to increase the amount of energy coming out of the bulb. And that's what you need to make the corals pop.

As far as if the corals truly need that extra actinic spectrum, I think that's still a pretty hot topic for debate. I'm not up on the arguments, but I thought the argument for actinic was that as you go into the water in the ocean, the actinic spectrum is what penetrates more. So in order to recreate the spectrum of light the corals see in their natural setting, actinic supplementation is done.
 
As far as if the corals truly need that extra actinic spectrum, I think that's still a pretty hot topic for debate. I'm not up on the arguments, but I thought the argument for actinic was that as you go into the water in the ocean, the actinic spectrum is what penetrates more. So in order to recreate the spectrum of light the corals see in their natural setting, actinic supplementation is done.

My thought exactly. The blue part of the spectrum is what makes it to the deeper parts of the reef.
 
the term "fluoresce" means the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation of a different wavelength.
it's just what YOU see, not what the corals see. it's all about looks. enough PAR and it doesn't matter if the corals fluoresce, they still do very well. the trouble is, they don't appear bright and colorful.
many folks including myself have used metal halide lamps with no actinic supplement, and corals grow fine.
 
ok but my regular blue LEDs of my moonlight make my corals look like they're glow in the dark.

and these LEDs are just blue, not actinic or anything special
 
the term "fluoresce" means the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation of a different wavelength.
it's just what YOU see, not what the corals see. it's all about looks. enough PAR and it doesn't matter if the corals fluoresce, they still do very well.the trouble is, they don't appear bright and colorful.

Totally agree. Fluorescing means nothing as far as the coral or coral health is concerned. Like 360 mentioned in the last post, even low wattage LEDs (by themselves) will give the corals a little pop.

many folks including myself have used metal halide lamps with no actinic supplement, and corals grow fine.
Not arguing with that either. Corals grow fine without actinic supplementation. But would they grow better with it? Obviously no one can tell because you can't have both conditions occur at the same time to do a valid test. And I think that's where the debate always ends up.

360... as far as your LEDs making corals pop - yeah, my moonlights do that also. And I run them 24/7. And when I have my normal lights on, you can't see any of the fluorescence that you see when it's just the LEDs that are on. It's the spectrum of the light we're dealing with, and the LEDs are obviously in that spectrum. But those little LEDs just get overpowered when you have the normal lights on.

Go ahead and put a blue filter on your daylight bulb. But I'm pretty sure you're not going to be happy with the results. Neither will your corals because you'll be blocking an awful lot of light.
 
got another fixture. 36" with 2 actinics.

heres a photo with just the actinics on

163858_10150369491085567_676325566_16725585_2757903_n.jpg
 
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