What k value gives the best acropora colour?

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pomme

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What k value gives the best acropora colour?

I am thinking of adding more light to my tank and am wondering what k value gets the best colours out of acropor's. I am just looking for colour and dont mind about growth.

Andrew
 
Generally 10k is more for growth (higher par) and 20k is best for color. Obviously there are some exceptions.
 
so would a 14k be a good one in the middle?

and also what sort of depths do 150 watt, 250watt and 400watt penetrate down to?
 
14 is kind of best of both worlds. Decent color and decent growth.

How deep is your tank?I have a pair of 175watts on my 175gallon. (in addition to my vho's). I would not reccomend those to anyone w/ a tank deeper than a standard 55 gallon tank. 250watt (a pair) on a 2ft deep tank would be nice....I am putting three 400watts on mine.....its gonna rock! If you can afford the 400's go for that definately. I am getting mine on ebay for about 500.00. That includes 3 reflectors, 3 ballast, and 3 400watt bulbs. (bulbs in the 85.00 range.)
 
ohh sorry if you go to my profile, then all posts by this member, then down the page to 'thinking of adding more light?'

does that help? sorry dont know why link doesnt work.

a
 
I read the your first post...is that basically what you were wanting me to take a look at? Too me, 100gal tank with basically one 250 is only about half of what you need. 3-4 watts per gallon is standard and for an sps tank, I am going to double that. I would really reccomend the 400watts for an sps tank. Not only will the color be better, but the light penetration and the growth as well. My tank will have 6.85 watts per gallon once the lighting upgrade is finished.

I would love to see some shots of the full tank though!
 
okay i have 3 watts per g at the mo but if i add

2 x 150 watters it will take it up to 6 watts per g

and if i add 2 x 250 watters it will take it up to 8 watts per g.

i unfortunatley cant change the 250 to a 400 which i would if could (bad advice from lfs),
 
That would work...its the watts per gallon and the par rating on the bulb that counts. Sounds like you got it handled! :mrgreen:
 
with the tank depth of 40" do you think it would be best to have:

lighting 1:
have a 6 watts per gal. usse my existing lighting as is, and then add 2 x 150 watters with 20 de bulbs.

or

lighting 2:
have 8 watts per gal. use the lighting ive got but change bulb to a 250 watt 20k de, and then get 2 x 250 watt units with 14k bulbs.

lighting 3:
use light as is and add 2 x 150 units from stm with 14k de bulbs.

lighting 4:
use light as is and add 2 x 250 units from stm with 14k de bulbs.

there is also a chance of adding a twin t5 unit in, so would you if you had the space and would it be:
both white
both actinic
one white one actinic
or both deep actinic.

thanx so much for the help guys,
would really appreciate what you think?

what would you suggest?
 
I will tell you guys that WPG is a terrible way to attempt to gauge a tanks success at keeping corals. Much easier to decide what you want to keep and then build your lights around that. SPS's love MH lights, but certain SPS's will work with PC's and VHO's assuming that the PC's are close to the water and the corals are placed extremely high in the tank.

FYI, I have over 9 wpg in my tank. ReefRunner has over 12 wpg.

Now, back to the original question:

What k value gives the best acropora colour?

I am thinking of adding more light to my tank and am wondering what k value gets the best colours out of acropor's. I am just looking for colour and dont mind about growth

I believe that a bulbs in the higher end of the spectrum not only produce better coloration on corals, but they also tend to grow better. More and more people are saying that their corals have improved when they switched out their lights for 14-20K bulbs and/or adding 03's.

I recently added 2X55 03 PC's to my custom canopy that already included a 20K Hamilton 250w MH. I can already tell that my Zoo's have begun to go back to the color I first purchased them at.

I am a believer in the "blue" tank. While PAR is reduced when going to higher spectrum bulbs, I think the "blue" effect is not only pleasing on the eyes, but seems to help the corals as well.
 
Biggen said:
I will tell you guys that WPG is a terrible way to attempt to gauge a tanks success at keeping corals.

Which is why I also included par in the original reply.


I am a believer in the "blue" tank. While PAR is reduced when going to higher spectrum bulbs, I think the "blue" effect is not only pleasing on the eyes, but seems to help the corals as well.

There are two scientific ways to measure light.

Lux: This is what we generally refer to when we say wattage. Its the difference between a 40 watt bulb and a 250 watt bulb. To the human eye, the 550nm range is the wavelenghth that we see as the brightest.

Par: is photosynthetic Available Radiation or what your corals need to carry out photosynthesis. For our purposes, its the intensity of the of the usable light as it travels deeper through the water. Par is important for several reasons. It tells us which light is best suited for our corals, it tells manufactures how to avoid a yellow looking bulb (550nm wave length appears yellow)

Bang Guy gave this example:
"An example would be a 110 watt URI VHO actinic bulb. It has 1/10th the lumens of a standard daylight florescent bulb but 2 1/2 times the PAR.

If you just went by Lumens then the Actinic bulb would appear to be useless for a reef tank."

Its my understanding that the best par rating (top to bottom) is
M/h, T5, VHO and P/C, and then N/O.

Now...throw in the last kink in the whole thing, the K rating.

K is what tells you what color the light is. Nothing else. Sunlight is 5.5 K (if I remember correctly.) The closer to 0 you get the more yellow the light.




Wow....I'm outta breath. Did that make sense?
 
2 x 150 watters it will take it up to 6 watts per g

Watts per gallon does't work well for VHO and PC, it doesn't even apply to MH. MH is a pinpoint source of light and to guage what you need you need to look at the depth of your tank. Your tank is 28" tall, that needs 400 watt mh IMO, MH is most efficient for 24 square inches, your tank is 40" long, therefore, IMO, you need two 400W MHs to give your acropora a good chance of haveing good color and growth. Especially if you going to go with higher kelvin bulbs where the par and the intensity is lacking from a 6500K bulb of the same wattage.
 
reefrunner i cant change to a 400 watt so i am stuch with the 250, but the corals do seem to be growing and looking a good colour at the bottom of the tank.

i do understand your points, but for me i cant put them in, which i would love to do :cry:

so from the options i have given would you go for option 4, so i will have 3 250 watt 14k (which i might change to 10k) bulbs, with t5 avtinic supplementation?
 
biggen which of the 4 lighting options would you go for?

and everyone else!

I would go with option five. Two 400W 20K MH supplemented with 03's. :)

Seriously though, in a tank of your depth, you need light that penetrates if you are wanting to keep SPS's. MH is the way to go for this. I would go with whatever option that gives you the most insense light and then supplement with 03 if you can.

So you really need ATLEAST 2 high wattageMH bulbs for this purpose.
 
reefrunner i cant change to a 400 watt so i am stuch with the 250, but the corals do seem to be growing and looking a good colour at the bottom of the tank.

LOL, the whole point of your other thread was because your frags were turning brown. If you can't do 400 watters then I would recommend adding 1 more 250W DE HQI (rather than the 2 150 watters).While you will get more light for the top of the tank out of the two 150watters, the 250w will give greater penetration, and there is no need for more than 2 MH bulbs over a 40" tank, you will already have good overlapping from the middle with 2 250W DE HQI.
 
Lux: This is what we generally refer to when we say wattage.

Lux is a measure of output and wattage is a measure of power consumption.

K is what tells you what color the light is. Nothing else. Sunlight is 5.5 K (if I remember correctly.) The closer to 0 you get the more yellow the light.

Kelvin is a number which describes the spectrum/color of the bulb. The color of the bulb, however, has very specific reactions from the photosynthetic inverts we keep. Basically look at it like this, the higher the spectrum the more blue, the more blue the bulb the more UV it (probably) produces, the more UV the more suntan oil (pigment) the corals need to put on to keep from getting burned. Higher spectrum bulbs tend to make the corals color up more.
 
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