moonlighting

[spawn]

I'm running a red sea max 250 with 6 t5 39w bulbs already, 3 x 10000k R.S. orig. bulbs & 3 actinic 1 R.S. orig & 2 giessmen actinic. Not to say that it's not good, just think it could be better. This is my first tank & was started on may 9/2010. would post some pics. but have tried and the upload keeps failing.

[kien]

Originally Posted by spawn

I'm running a red sea max 250 with 6 t5 39w bulbs already, 3 x 10000k R.S. orig. bulbs & 3 actinic 1 R.S. orig & 2 giessmen actinic. Not to say that it's not good, just think it could be better. This is my first tank & was started on may 9/2010. would post some pics. but have tried and the upload keeps failing.

You can do a lot with 6 t5 bulbs. I would personally find 3 10K bulbs a little too far on the yellow side for my tastes (even with 3 actinics). Perhaps play around with different combinations. The beauty of T5s is that the possible combinations are mind boggling. Actinics generally do not have a lot of par so what you can do to achieve a similar affect is use 22K bulbs instead. They will provide that colour POP that you're looking for while still providing usable par for coral growth. Also consider throwing in one or two 14K bulbs. They are a nice middle ground between the benefits of a 20K/22K bulb and a 10K bulb. Decent PAR with decent colour enhancing effects. Of course we can't forget the fiji purple bulb. I'm personally not a fan of it but a lot of people do like the effect.

The bottom line is you have a lot of options in front of you that you can persue with your T5 fixture to help bring out your colours.

[spawn]

That's right I find the lights too bright as is, with a lack of color, or color that is washed out. So I'm thinkin keep the two Gsmn. actinic bulbs and add 2 @ 22k, and your suggesting 14k bulbs for the remaining 2 ? Most of my corals are sps, is that gonna be enough,to maintain good growth? I don't know much about the lighting yet. Here's the rest of the water par.
sal 1.026
ph 8.4
kh 9
ca 425
mg 1350
no3 0

[kien]

Originally Posted by spawn

That's right I find the lights too bright as is, with a lack of color, or color that is washed out. So I'm thinkin keep the two Gsmn. actinic bulbs and add 2 @ 22k, and your suggesting 14k bulbs for the remaining 2 ? Most of my corals are sps, is that gonna be enough,to maintain good growth? I don't know much about the lighting yet. Here's the rest of the water par.
sal 1.026
ph 8.4
kh 9
ca 425
mg 1350
no3 0

Those are great parameters!

A combination that I like and what I currently run on one of my tanks is..

14K
22K (dusk and dawn)
10K
14K
22K (dusk and dawn)
14K

I'm actually not a fan of actinic bulbs as I mentioned before, they have pretty low PAR value. You can achieve a similar effect with the 22Ks while gaining PAR. Bulb selection is such a personal choice though. What works for me might not work for you, and vice versa.

[ScubaSteve]

Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention (I've been wanting to put this out there for a while and it seems relevant to you)... You can guess which bulbs are going to make your colours really stand out if you do a little reading on your livestock.

Advanced Aquarist is particulary good for it but you can find info on all y'er critters and find out what the primary pigments are and at what wavelengths they flouresce. A lot of people go heavy on the actinic/blues but you'd be surprised what a pink bulb, for instance, can do. It all depends on what you have in there. Try matching the spectrum of the lights (available on the manufacturers website) to your livestock and you will be surprised.

Nerdy? Yes. Excessive? Probably. Save you money from having to try out a bunch of different bulbs? Likely. I did this when shopping for a new halide and it worked well. I then tried it with my moonlights and swapped the stock led's for a different blue that would make my corals flouresce more at night. And flouresce they do!

[o.c.d.]

Your finding the led's too bright right. They are still new and over time they will dim as the bulb gets older....... Mac's rule...

[spawn]

No the led's are fine, It was that color of the t5's that i didn't like. I went to redcoral last thurs. and kevin helped me out. So now my tank doesn't look so yellow & I think i get more colors out of everything.

[ScubaSteve]

Ya, those little LED's would be easily drowned out by your main lights. If you want your colours to "pop" more they a higher colour temperature bulb (like 14,000K) or try some of the specialty bulbs like the Fiji Purples, etc. I'm not a T5 guy (Halides or Bust!) by I have been impressed by some of the tanks that have a nice mix of T5 bulbs. Poke around this site a bit to see what combos people are running. The Grizz has a pretty nice looking set-up; take a look at what he has (there is a T5 bulb thread that started recently and he's got some info there).