SPS lighting quick question

[sixteengallon]

i have a 36" mixed "garden reef" tank and have a few SPS, LPS, and softies. I am using a Tek Light T5 fixture with four 39 watt bulbs. currently in the fixture I have one yellow bulb (6500k?), one aquablue, and two different types of actinics (one blue and one purple). My friend said that my tank would look cooler ditching the yellow bulb, and that my corals would be fine. He recommended that I go with two aquablues, and two blue actinics. I thought that SPS corals actualy prefer more light on the lower part of the spectrum? What is the optimal combination for my tank?

What do you guys think?

[sixteengallon]

anybody?

[DanInSD]

There was an article recently that showed that higher color temperatures led to better SPS growth. If you look at the aqua-blue documentation, it says it is specifically designed for SPS.

Now, I would be most concerned with total light amount here. The actinics don't contribute significantly to PAR, so you've really got 2x39 on this tank. Not much. I'd go for 4xaqua-blue if I was in your shoes and wanted to keep SPS.

Dan

[Paulairduck]

I hope you really like blue, I have used that combo, and it was toilet bowl blue. With only having four bulbs, you need the white bulb. A cleaner looking bulb would be the ATI special bulb

I run two four bulb fixtures and I run

pure actinic geissmann
pro color ATI
Special ATI
Aqua blue plus ATI

it is a good rounded spectrum with good par.

[hahnmeister]

Originally posted by DanInSD
There was an article recently that showed that higher color temperatures led to better SPS growth. If you look at the aqua-blue documentation, it says it is specifically designed for SPS.

Now, I would be most concerned with total light amount here. The actinics don't contribute significantly to PAR, so you've really got 2x39 on this tank. Not much. I'd go for 4xaqua-blue if I was in your shoes and wanted to keep SPS.

Dan

I believe one of those actinics is a blue+ 450-460nm style bulb... which has a much higher output than the 420nm/purple bulbs.

The current lighting setup of 1x actinic, 1x blue, 1x aquablue (dayactinic is another term), and a 'sun' 6500Kish bulb is a great combo. Full spectrum, loads of blue. The only improvements I would look into are brand (ATI and Giesemann are a huge improvement over Current USA's for instance), and perhaps replacing the purple actinic with another blue+ bulb. I would leave the sun bulb though... some SPS that are pink/red/yellow need the warmer spectrums (as well as just plain PAR output gain from a 6500K ish bulb) to look right. You can check mothra's blog at reefs.org to see more on that.

Still, you could go 2x aquablue and 2x blue+ and have plenty of what you need... thats the combo Iwan uses on his tank. Or, a buddy of mine uses nothing but 2x GE 6500K and 2x ATI blue+ on his 40B frag tank. Its a little daylight looking (not too bad though really... very crisp and slightly blue) but the corals love it. Its one of the highest output combos you can use.