lighting

[Elivia]

i want to put a blue light in my tank to make it look better. i have t5 white lights in at the moment. if i change to blue lights completly will this bother my tank critters? i have 3 x mushroom morphs, 2 clown and one damsel. The white lights seem to bring out the yuck green colour in my tank and my white gravel bed is always looking drab. i want to bring out the colours of my morphs. they just look drab under my white lights. They are very healthy though but i have seen them under blue lights or something and they look amazing under them. is their a type of blue coloured light that is ok to use durning the day when my tank lights are on for about si hours? I have a 240 litr tank with live rock. Also i am thinking about getting into some other corals like a brain coral or something so i just wanted to make sure before i go nuts at my local marine store. Also i have read that brain corals do well under acntic lights? i think i spelt that wrong?...anctic?....

I dont want to get advice from my local store as sometimes i get the feeling its always about me buying and him telling me 'good things' so i buy more! very frustrating

 

[Krish]

I don't think your corals will be too happy with just blue actinics . They need so many hours a day of "useable light" which actinics alone won't provide them. When you see people running just actinics alone on their tanks, it usually only for the dusk to dawn effect where they will have actinics on only when the lights first come on for an hour or 2, then all the lights combined for the day (about 6-8 hours or so) then actinics alone again for the final hour or two. If you want your corals to look better under the lighting, look into some bulbs with a higher kelvin rating or just add some actinics to what you already have to "blue" things up a bit, but I wuldn't go so far as to run only blue actinics all day cause your corals wouldn't be too happy.

Just a few thoughts

 

[conduit7]

Your corals will defiently have a case of the blues. Keep them happy with brighter lights, might try leds if investing in new lights. Much lower cost to run and no chiller.

 

[Skimmy]

please....
your mushrooms dont much care to the point of it being detrimental to them if you wanted to run an all blue tank...

fwiw people, i have run a t5-ho 4 bulb unit with just blue (geisemann actinic+ which is really a 22k blue bulb, not actinic) over lps, softies and sps corals for over 6 months and saw no ill effects... some of the trickier sps didnt color up the same, but the growth was there, and there was more than enough usable light for the corals to be happy.

and now, i run mostly blue LED's on my nano except for about 6 hours a day i run the whites as well, i have more than 2-1 ratio of blue lights to white, which is usually opposite of what most people do, and even the sps are growing good... i have 36 1 watt LED's on my nano, 28 of them are blue and 8 are white.

so, since you have a t5 fixture, i would say for mushrooms all blue bulbs would be great, just make sure you get the geisemann actinic+ not pure actinic, or get the ati blue+ bulbs...

another combo i liked was 3 blue bulbs and one ATI pro color or pink bulb, that looked sweet too.

 

[trido]

please....
your mushrooms dont much care to the point of it being detrimental to them if you wanted to run an all blue tank...



so, since you have a t5 fixture, i would say for mushrooms all blue bulbs would be great, just make sure you get the geisemann actinic+ not pure actinic, or get the ati blue+ bulbs...

I have to agree with Mark on this. Mushrooms, Xenia, GSP, etc., dont need much light to grow. They may not grow like weeds but should be just fine under a more blue spectrum.

FWIW, I grew xenia under a 64watt normal output, four foot long shop light in my sump. The wild mushrooms grew just fine in there as well, even under 16 inches of water

Just like Mark said, actinic plus, aquablue plus, or ATI blue plus and you'll be much happier.

 

[returnofsid]

T5 "blue" lighting isn't a true actinic. Most of the T5 blue bulbs still put out plenty of useful PAR, such as the Blue Plus, and a couple others. You'll be just fine.

 

[Krish]

Also i am thinking about getting into some other corals like a brain coral or something so i just wanted to make sure before i go nuts at my local marine store. Also i have read that brain corals do well under acntic ligh

So are you guys saying if he goes with brain corals and other corals he will be fine or fine with just mushrooms?? He did say he wanted to make sure before he went nuts at the marine store getting other types of corals.

 

[returnofsid]

If he went with all AquaBlue Specials or all Blue Plus, he'd be just fine, even with SPS, though the SPS would grow slower and not color up to their full potential.

 

[Krish]

If he went with all AquaBlue Specials or all Blue Plus, he'd be just fine, even with SPS, though the SPS would grow slower and not color up to their full potential.

Good to know! I'd probably still use something that will allow corals to grow to their full potential as well as color up to their full potential so they wouldn't just "thrive". I guess it's the same way I am with feeding. Not going to feed my fish once a week cause I know my fish will get by on that and thrive. I want to give them what's best to help them grow to their full potential. Nonetheless, good to know

 

[Elivia]

Thanks everyone for your advice! Its given me a bit of food for thought for a while. oh and by the way.... i am a she...not a he! lol

 

[Krish]

Thanks everyone for your advice! Its given me a bit of food for thought for a while. oh and by the way.... i am a she...not a he! lol

My bad. Had the same thing happen to me here where I was called a "she" so don't feel too bad