Well I was going to stay out of this and Stephane probably wishes I did but I don't agree with some of the statements made here. first all I want to agree that yes this is a Iwasaki made bulb and Hortilux is one of there biger plant growing brands (specificly made for the hydroponic industry) but there are also 3 different main brands of hortilux bulbs and depending which one it could range from a yellow to a white color the 2100K's will be real yellow (I think thatis the spectrum that AJ posted, and the 4100K will actualy be fairly white. having said that I have never heard of 10K or 20K hortilux and I would be skeptical of them.. maby e-mail iwasaki themselves and inquire about that.
People seam to be hung up on actinic light for our corals.. well they don't need Actinic light.. yes it works but so does any other light in the 360nm to 780nm range.. it just happens that the lower numbers penatrate better than the higher thats why everyone thinks you need actinic to make the corals grow. Well in the 18" to 3' of water our tanks contain you are not filtering out any significant amount of the light and any light in the previous mention wave lenght range WILL stimulate photosynthis.
there for if you have a high PAR value in the green range like this bulb you should be able to grow stuff like a hot damn :D BUT, and this is a big BUT it will not look as good to the eye as it would if you have some blueish lights on there to make thing "Glow" so with this bulbs it comes right down to you.. if you want the corals to grow and don't care much about how apeasing the tank is to your eye then get them (mind you some people actualy like the way iwasaki's look on there tank. it will be more realistic loking than a bunch of actinics on it) the other option is if you want your tank to glow and have a blueish look to it add some VHO actinics with these bulbs.
if there is any more doubts as the ability of your coral to grow under thease lights.. even Erik Borneman says
" You can grow corals well using only actinic light - if there is enough of it - same as any light source since corals can use all the wavelengths and will photoadapt to maximize use of whatever wavelengths are present."
here is the thread whare he says that
http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin...hreadid=116423
I have seen the 4100K bulbs in the local hydroponic shops and they look quite white there .. I imagin a couple VHO actinics or true 03 PC actinics would make it quite nice.
what about this one? could it be this?
or this one
unless we know which line of Hortilux he is talking about we can't be sure if they are bad or 1/2 deicent so lets not jump the gun and say they are crap befor we know the info :D :D
Steve
[ 02 October 2002, 16:59: Message edited by: StirCrazy ]