I have been running XM 10K's for the last several years and recently changed to the XM 14K and the colours on my SPS have changed significantly. The 14K's are about half as bright as the 10K but the colours in my SPS have taken off. it may be to soon to tell but it may come down to growth vs. colour. My 2 cents!

Dave

I second your comment. I went from a 10k XM to a 14k XM and also saw a great deal of color changes. I saw much deeper and brighter colors throughout my system. The downside was that I got a lot of blue and purples.

What kind of color changes did you see?

250W DE 14K Hamiltons, bright white edging on a bit a blue, no yellow. Had a couple of premature failures (I'll chk my logs for life)

I like my 14k Aqua Connects, had 10k Ushio before but seemed to yellow out fairly early. All this based on SE bulbs though.

i just switched to aqua connect 14000K 250W DE from the standard coralife 10000K that was in my fixture, and the colors are much nicer, and it seems just as bright.

According to the above reefkeeping article the XM10K lamp and the Icecap electronic ballast was the best combination which is what I use. However, I am thinking of using a combination of a single 400W XM10K and a 400W XM14K in January when I do my routine yearly bulb changes.

re: early failures with Hamiltons, one failed early at 6 months other 7 months, though have removed others still running after a year.

I'm running XM 10K as well but want to try South Pacific Sunlight (SPS). I've heard a lot of good talk about 10K, 14K, and even 20K

J