T5 Aqualights

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DurTBear

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jan 6, 2007
Messages
102
Location
San Francisco, CA
I just upgraded to the Sunpod 150W HQI 14k metal halide fixture for my tank and so far, I love it. The one thing that I miss is the actinics because I loved how the corals fluoresced under the blue light and having that sunrise/sunset look with just the PC actinics on. So I got a coralife T5 double linear strip with true actinic 03 blue bulbs. These bulbs look really purple compared to my old PC actinics in my opinion. Are they supposed to look purple? I thought I heard something about how PC actinics are not "true" actinics so maybe this is why it looks different. Thanks.
 
I can't answer that question as I have never had any T5s....one thing I would like to mention or better ask is whether you acclimated your tank to the new lighting? It is a really good idea to break the new lighting in on a tank slowly especially when going to a MH light from PC....usually a reduced photoperiod for a week does the trick but sometimes you may need to use the screen method where as you use screen over the tank to further filter the light out a bit during the reduced photoperiod....
 
Yeah, I'm using a reduced photoperiod. So before, I had the lights on for 8 hours per day and with the new MH lights, I'm only turning them on for 5 hours per day. I'm going to aim to increase the photoperiod by an hour each week. So far, a few mushrooms don't open up quite as much as before but other than that, I haven't noticed any other adverse effects with all the other corals. Thanks for the expressing your concern though!
 
What's the K rating on your actinics? The higher, the more purple.
 
I believe the K ratings for the actinic bulbs are 10,000K but I'll have to double check that when I get home. I used to have a 2x65W PC fixture from Odyssea I believe and they were more blue but I don't remember what the K rating was for that bulb. I'll have to check.
 
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