Do you need daylight bulbs?

[Skimmerking]

Lisa I find that with flouresants that your tank will have certain colors WRT the lights that you have let's look at the Daylight bulbs, its more of a 6500K and will grow algae same as the mid day bulbs. With that being said i have used the Cdn tire 6500 bulbs and grow lots of corals with them. if you can stand the color then you are GTG keep in mind. The ocean when you look at the color you see you get either a light -med blue or a mid yellow look at shallow reefs. The t-5's that your 20 gal tank has i would check to see if you can run the standard T-8's in them some of the units will allow that. but for color I would pop in if you are wanting some color and plan on staying withthe T-5's a
Coral plus
12000K x2
purple plus
that should give you a nice blue hue but not alot.


HTH

Originally Posted by CandyCane

I've got a 20gallon reef tank with mixed corals. The fixture I have is running T5 bulbs and it is able to have 4 bulbs total but they've been burning out.

Since the actinic and sun wave bulbs have burnt out, the bulbs left are a coral wave and an aquablue special.

I thought this would have a negative effect on the corals but since the loss of the daylight and actinic my corals have increased in color in a very noticable way along with size and growth rate.

Any idea's why this would be the case and should I try adding more bulbs again or just leave it all as is?

Do you know what the long term affects of having just the blue and wave bulbs would be?

Originally Posted by Skimmer King

With that being said i have used the Cdn tire 6500 bulbs and grow lots of corals with them.

Canadian Tire sales T5HO 6500K bulbs? Or are you referring to T8's?

[CandyCane]

Okay it's a wave point fixture. Whatever the bulbs are called that go in there.
I'm very sure the corals arent expanding to get more light. They have grown new mouths in the last 2 weeks. The small polyps have multiplied 3x and all the sps are splitting.

The fish aren't acting any different than before and their colours appear more vibrant as well.

The 2 bulbs that are left are new ones.

So I'm going to stay away from white light and go with new actinic bulb and another coral growth one.

Thanks for the advise

[Skimmerking]

Originally Posted by Cugio

Canadian Tire sales T5HO 6500K bulbs? Or are you referring to T8's?

Sorry Donny My bad T-8's and T-12's

Gotcha, thanks. I was hoping to find some cheaper alternatives for my planted tank. They manufactured great T8/12 combinations but unfortunately for the T5's, I can only find 3-4000K at the hardware stores.

[Enigma]

Originally Posted by Cugio

Gotcha, thanks. I was hoping to find some cheaper alternatives for my planted tank. They manufactured great T8/12 combinations but unfortunately for the T5's, I can only find 3-4000K at the hardware stores.

I've purchased 5000k t5s from Lee Valley. I've seen the 5000k T5s at Golden Acres. Lee Valley's price is better.

EDIT: The plant growth I've had out of these bulbs is insane! I switched to the T5s for the first time this year. I started my veggie garden at least a month too early.

Awesome, thank you for the tip.