Lighting Question

I noticed one of my 39W T5 actinics was out last night. It is the bulb that came with my Red Sea Max 250 and the tank is less than 4 months old. I am not replacing it with another Red Sea Max bulb since I am not happy about the life of this one. I have three questions.

Are there brands I should look for/avoid? I am probably going to buy one at the LFS tonight so my options will probably be limited. They do usually have a good selection though.

Can I switch up my lighting to have 4 actinics and 2 10,000k's or would that hurt my ability to add corals in the future? Right now I have 3 of each and the few corals that I have really don't show much color under the lights.

If I can't split the lights up that way (which I assume to be the case), are there bulbs that have more blue than others?

Any advice is appreciated.

 

I use uv lighting bulbs and so does my dad they seem to hold color and they last a long time(haven't had any blow). I have 2 actinic 454, an actinic white 12000k, and a 10000k and everything is doing great. I'm goint to be upgrading 2 a 6 bulb and going to do
Actinic 454
Actinic white 12k
Super actinic 420
10k
Super actinic 420
Actinic 454

Again that's with the uv lighting that's what my lfs carries but I do recomend them they are great bulbs

 

I've always been happy with ATI.

 

Btw bigjim, any pictures of that tank of yours? I like the redsea but never actually saw one in person. How arre they? Is it worth the chunk of change?

 

I have some pictures from the initial setup in an old thread, but I need to update it with some new pictures. I have been going through the ugly algae and cyano phase so I really didn’t want to post anything, but the algae is gone now and the cyano is almost gone. I’ll try to add some pics this weekend.
The set up is perfect for me, but not everyone. My space was limited and I was overwhelmed with all of the information about saltwater tanks. It is much easier to learn how everything works with an all in one system. I don’t have the flexibility to upgrade or add things like a refugium, but I will likely buy something bigger in a couple years and go all out. The skimmer has gotten some bad reviews, but I finally have it figured out and it is working very well. The water level is extremely important for the skimmer to work properly and I don’t think a lot of people have realized that when they give it bad reviews. It is noisy though. The only thing I have added is a GFO reactor and I will probably have to add a chiller soon since the weather is warming up.
I would recommend it to someone new to the hobby who has the money to buy the tank, or to someone who doesn’t feel like building a whole system. There are a few little things I would change if I built the system. The extra cooling fans pretty much have to be on when the lights are on, but they are not connected to the timer for the lights. If you forget to turn off the extra fans when the lights go out or are not home to do so, the water temperature can take a big swing downward. I would also add a couple more night time LED lights and add some flexibility to control the actinics and 10k lights individually.

 

Nice, thanks for the info a buddy of mine was looking at it and I really had no clue on what to tell him about it. I'm going thru the same algea stage as u were with my new 55, what did u do to get rid of it? Just have to wait it out?

 

I started using a GFO reactor. It got rid of my GHA in a couple weeks, but my nitrates went up (probably because the GHA wasn't there to use it) and now I have cyano. I did a 48 hour blackout, 20% water change, manual removal and fewer feedings to solve that problem. Most of the cyano is gone now too. I think time and water changes would have eventually worked too, but I hate looking at the stuff.

 

Yea same here iv been doing water changes and removing as much as I can myself and it just keeps coming back. I. Also just purchased a cuc from reefcleaners which seems to be helping. I bought 2 fuzzy chitons too which are amazing on all types of algea they just move so slow. My one has only cleaned like a 4x6" space since Tuesday but is cleaner then any snail or hermit has made it.