Lighting Changes

[akm]

I am having second thoughts on the lighting setup right now and I'd like to get some other opinions on it. My tank is 48" long, 24"tall, 16" wide in the middle (it's a bow front).

Here are my two options:

What I have now is two 250 halides and 330 watts of actinic and 110 watts of 10K vho. The problem is that to be able to fit the vho in I had to pretty much get rid of the reflectors for the halides which now probably makes them pretty inefficent.

My other choice would be to get rid of the vhos and put two Lumenarc minis and hopefully a 175watt 20K halide in also.

I do have trouble with sps keeping their color near the bottom so that's would made me think about changing. So let me hear ya'lls opinions.

[GaryP]

Aaron,

I would eliminate the 10K VHO. It seems a little redundant with the MH already in there.

[akm]

I would but I's have to order another. ;)

[fishypets]

Yup I'd keep you set up and replace the 10K vho's with a 420 nm actinic. BTW are you running 10K M.H.? What are your water params? Low nutrients will also cause color to fade.

[akm]

10K reeflux, haven't checked params in awhile but nirates are probably around 5ppm and phosphates I have never checked(I guess I probably should :roll ). I don't think low nutrients are a problem since algae still grows.

[fishypets]

Go with the actinic VHO and your color should come back. The problem now is you don't have much blue spectrum which make the colors pop. Here is a pic of my 125 with 10K Reeflux and T5 actinic. I was getting great growth/color with this combo.

[brewercm]

If you are using the batwing style reflectors I had mine setup on my old 75 where the section of VHO tube that would have been behind them I place on the inside of the reflector along with the halides. As long as you don't have them too close to the halides they should be fine, mine were.