Choosing the 250W MH Ballast & Bulb

[TOMMY323]

I'm going to setup the new 110g (60x24x24) tank next month. In my plan, I will go with 2x250W MH but don't have any idea on mixing with actinic or blue or VHO whatever.

I'll keep most kind of mushroom, zoanthid, leather coral and 80/20 of LPS/SPS.

My question is If I using 2x250W MH only, what are the different between combo with actinic? And what bulb & ballast you would recommend? For 50/50 of appeareance and coral healthty & growth. I have PFO & IceCap ballast in my choice now, what's the different? Which one is better?

 

[Unarce]

http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=49114

Just wanted to make reference to what I posted on that thread.

I think a 2 250W double-ends with 20000K bulbs will work best. Then, you wouldn't need to put more money into any actinic supplementation.

 

[Unarce]

BTW, I really liked the movie 'Ong Bak'.

 

[TOMMY323]

Thanks Reefnutz, And will it have any long-term effect on most king of coral if i do not use an Actinic bulb? How it diiferent from using 6,500K MH + VHO Actinic blue? If it produce the same result (spectrum) why most of reefer using the latter system if using 20,000K or 14,000K MH alone is far of simple!


PS. Glad to hear that you like "Ong Bak", I watched it twice on local cable TV. If you like stunt-action movies, I think you must also like Hongkong movies also right?

 

[Unarce]

The 6,500K MH + VHO Actinic combo has been a staple in reefkeeping for many years, and 20K's are fairly new in comparison. As you can see from the links I found in my previous thread, we can see exactly which wavelengths are used in photosynthesis and which ones aren't needed. You'll find that a 20K MH bulb could easily peak at the primary blue photosynthetic spectrum of an actinic bulb. It will also peak at the secondary red photosynthetic spectrum without all of the unnecessary abundance of wavelengths in between.

Ong Bak was a relief from the usually CGI crap that we see nowadays. Pure and realistic fighting. I love foreign movies and I'm a huge fan of old Kurosawa films. I really haven't dabbled much in the Hong Kong action genre, but I have seen pretty much every drama film by Gong Li. I did like Full-time Killer which was pretty recent.