6 bulb t5 setup help

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Would this light fixture be better even though it's only 4 lamp instead of 6? There aren't alot of fixtures available in Australia in my price range. Now I know you get what you pay for and so on.. But I'm only looking to spend around 200-250 AUS$ I just don't think 2 t5s is enough seeing as I wanna keep more corals and a clam.

 

The Octopus is the fixture you want and more then likely it will come with the bulbs. The actinic's (Blue), Daylight (10,000K), and moonlights all have independent switches.

The most I would do to add more blue would be to slightly increase the K on the daylight bulbs, maybe 12K and at the most about 14K. Your corals will require daylight sun and blue keeps the tank from looking like the light is yellow.

Since you will have three switches (you should use timers) you can run the actinics 1-2 hours prior to the daylight bulbs turning on. This is recommended by some and it also allows you to view your tank in a nice rich blue color daily.

You will also enjoy the moonlights, have them come on after the actinics turn off. So an example would be:

Moonight bulbs turn off at 6:00 am
Morning actinics turn on a 6:00 am
actinics stay on and daylight bulbs turn on at 8:00 am
daylight bulbs turn off at 6:30 PM
actinics stay on until 8:30 PM then turn off
moon lights turn on at 8:30 pm

 

Also, I would go with three blue and three dayllight bulbs.

 

I don't think it's possible to do that because the octopus unit has 3 switches but only one power cord, so how are you supposed to put them on a timer???

 

Lol, looks like you'd have to crack the unit open and run new power cords?

 

Would that be hard to do?