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Anonymous

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Hello again,

I have a question about lighting. I have a coralife deluxe pc fixture 48" 260watt and a 48" reg actinic flo 40watt. Totalling 300watts. Now the question is: The deluxe fixture comes with two 10,000k 65watt bulbs and two 65watt actinic bulbs. Do the actinics count in the wattage count for my reef or are they strictly for color and appearance? If they count I'm at 4 watts per gallon. If they don't I'm in trouble because I only have two 65watt 10,000k bulbs which would be 130watts. So to rephrase my questions:
Do 65 watt actinic pc bulbs produce any usable light for my corals?
How much of their light is usable if any?
Are they strictly supplemented for color?
and How about the 40 watt Flo light?
Should I purchase two more 65watt 10,000k bulbs for my fixture?
What is the most plausable form of action?
 

Micah00

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I have 2 of the 24" 130w on my 55 and have never worried. As far as I know(could be wrong) the actinic produce the desirable blue wave length that is used by corals for photosynthesis.
 
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Anonymous

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I've heard mixed info on the actinic pc bulbs and actinics in general. On one hand people have said they produce the usable blue spectrum, synthesizing the natural spectrums at certain depths. And on the other hand I've heard the PAR (Photosynthetically Absorbable Rays)(i think) values of the actinics is very low. I just would like to know more about the actual spectrums and par values for the pc actinics and flo actinics.

Micah00--> How long have you had yur lights? and what are they supporting photosynthetically?
 

Micah00

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I've had one for about 7months and the other for about three the reason is I setup as FO then decided to reef half the tank,but I couldn't stop there. I have LPS and softies(seen growth from soft) and last week added an acro. There are pictures of my tank in Photograpy Forum!!
 

ChrisRD

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Location
Upstate NY
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What size/shape tank are you lighting and what do you want to keep in it? (Sounds like you're lighting a standard 75 gallon tank by what is written above...)

The 10K lamps will produce greater PAR than the actinics, but the actinics are producing useful light IMO.

A 50/50 mix of white/actinic flourescent lamps (like you have right now) is a very popular combination - nothing wrong with that.

BTW, watts per gallon is not a useful rule-of-thumb IMO - I wouldn't get too concerned about that...
 
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Anonymous

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It's strongly dependent on what you plan on keeping. If you are trying to push your lights to the limit, then you may want to ditch the actinics all together, just for the higher PAR value. If you are comfortably in the limits with regards to your lighting scheme and the corals you plan on keeping, the actinics are mostly asthetic. Stay away from SPS and clams and you shouldn't have a problem regardless.

Or you could just ditch the pc's altogether and get you some real lights.
:wink:
 

LA-Lawman

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The best actinic PC's i have seen are the coralife actinics and the hellolights actinics..

any other pc bulb doesn't cut it. no other actinic pc bulb will flourese you corals and other creatures....

hth

the 10k pc's produce more PAR light as mentioned above. i think you have a good combo. if you want to upgrade go with halides....
 

Go Fish

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I run the same exact coarlife unit that you described on my 55. I don't know much about the param's of the light, but as soon as my actinic comes on my both torch and my xenia respond to it and are almost completely open when the 10k comes on. So my geuss would be that it must count towards useable light.
 

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