what type of MH bulbs?
 

I just bought a MH setup for my coral tank at the shop and it currently has the geiseman 14 k 250 w.
what kind of bulbs would people suggest?
are geisemann bulbs good?

I am on my third set of Giesemann bulbs. I just changed them last night.

Myself, I dislike geisemann bulbs. I find them to be very yellow.

I have currently running 14K aquaconnect bulbs on my display and 14K EVC on my grow out and really like the colour of both bulbs. Neither, IMHO really need actinc supplements.

I'm running XM right now, but am looking at changing to Ushio.

This might help you in selecting a bulb.
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-04/jb/index.php

Hi Lando

What photo period do you run and how many months do you go between change out?

Tom R

I like Hamiltons but I have a brand new set of Aqua Connects I have to change out now that I see the pics I like the color

It depends on which ballast you are running as well. Some bulbs look great on one type of ballast and gross on others. (i.e. Radium bulbs)

it is a year old 72 inch Coralife fixture 250 W DE bulbs.
I am assuming that it would be electronic ballast

8hrs/day, I try and switch at around 10 months. Then I have spare bulbs with a little life left in them in case something happens.

I started with hamilton 10k. that came with my 250w reefstars. Crap bulb. very yellow. Then Geismann 13.5 k. then Xm 10k . all with VHO actinics. I now using Phoenix 14k with my blue vho actinics, and as of right now have never been so happy with my tank lighting. Awesome colors , hint of nice blue. When first fired up they were really blue but after 2 weeks they are perfect. Try them...

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