[fishytime]

Originally Posted by Myka

Sorry to disagree with you Doug, but I was really disappointed with the AquaScience 17,500K's that I bought. I found they looked AWESOME at first, but the color spectrum really faded within 6 months. The bulbs are now 9 months old and look like 10K's.

Imo, if you have good quality MH bulbs running with well chosen ballasts to produce a respectable amount of PAR then who cares about the PAR of the supplemental T5s? Plus the fact that in your case you have 4 T5s, so even if you choose T5 bulbs with lower PAR you will still be getting a fair amount of PAR in addition to the MH. My preference when using T5s as color supplementation for MH I like to use an equal amount of KZ Fiji Purple and UVL Super Actinic.

6-9 months is all you should expect from your T5s in a lighting unit that isnt actively cooled....I cant find the link to the actual in tank experiment where they had ATI bulbs one one side of the tank and Aquascience on the other.....flow and coral placement was mirrored on each side of the tank as closely as possible and after six months the difference in growth of the same coral species was quit noticeable.....

Fiji purps and "true/pure" actinics are a waste of a bulb IMO....great for color but not much else, and the fiji purps produce a red spectrum(algae growth) that most tanks not running a ultra low nutrient system, cant handle.......why not get some usable par out of your "color" bulbs( like the Aquascience 22000k and G actinic+)?