Making A Reef, Lesson:LIGHTING

Well all the talk about bulbs makes me woozy. Some people like to talk about ballast and bulbs and PAR and some talk about how you have this ballast to drive that bulbs and so on you guys all know the song. I pay little attention to that as it’s all just numbers and technical input all gathered under laboratory conditions with oscilloscopes and meters that the average hobbyist will never see or hear about. All working at the perfect temperatures and humidity and crystal clear filtered and scrubbed water not found in the average marine aquarium.

All that lab generated research and information is tweaked to allow the makers of the bulbs and ballast to print it as fact as it is were. They set the standards. The same methods are applied to electric appliance and Car Gas Mileage stickers from the EPA and DOE. You’ll never get the mileage in the real world that the sticker said you would when you were looking at that new car.

I base what I use on the experience of using many different set ups over the yrs. M/H are the only way to go for some. T5’s I find are getting better as UVL is now making bulbs for these setups. It’s the bulbs that make them all do their jobs, not so much the ballast. When I ran VHO’s, I found that the combination of a 50/50 mix of actinic whites and the Super actinics just offered a perfect 4 to 15 K. This is for me as well as the corals and I make a trade off for my viewing pleasure. The corals would much prefer the good old sun or some 55K Hamilton’s and better yet straight old Iwaki’s 65K’s. If it's purely coral growth at some very fast rates that you're after, then the Sun or one of these old lamps on any ballast will do. They last 2 + yrs and grow corals like nobody's business. But the trade off is dull coral coloration. This is why at my shop, we use the hothouse to grow our corals then move them into the shop to color up under the 14 K and URI super actinics.

Now I would suggest and use the Blue Line 14 K lamps in my M/H’s set up. The reason being that these lamps were developed with the proper mixture of metals and gases to replicate the K of light at depth on the equator where the corals tend to be more plentiful and where the majority tend to be collected. It’s all on averages of any given day in the ocean. All bulbs rated at a given K is not standard at all. I have some 13K and 14K bulbs here now that are more yellow then a 65K Iwaki and are expensive (about the most pricey bulbs out there) but they suck on any ballast. A good 14K lamp should look like the light a coral receives from the sun at high noon at 30 ft or so of depth in clear water on an average day on the reef. On average, a high quality bulb should keep every coral from that depth in nature pretty happy. The higher up corals prefer the 10K and deeper corals need the 20K. To simply toss in a 20K and expect all corals to thrive is not going to happen. And a coral that is from deeper 20K water will not do well under a 10K bulb. This is why I like a solid 14K as it’s a good all around average light for the mixed average community reef tank. This also why good actinic lighting is as important as it generates good fluorescents in the corals and that makes them process more food and that’s a whole different thing but the 420Nm makes it happen better then any K bulb will.

A subject like this could lead to an entire book its been done to death but you will never learn it from reading. At best you are better off finding someone who you feel has the experiences with enough lighting types and bulbs to get ideas from. Its nothing you will or can learn from a book . As for all the graphs about the wavelengths with this or that ballast means nothing at all. Too many variables of power being supplied from the power company and temperatures of the air around the ballast all make a huge difference in that area .

Ballast and lamps are all going to fire up and work and offer a different PAR value from area to area . I myself have used about every bulb out there and for months at a time , I have changed types and K’s 3 times in all the yrs of using M/H bulbs. Coralife 55K Iwaki’s 65K Ushios K to Blue life SPS 14K all with only URI Super actinic VHO’s If I were using T5, I would only use a 50/50 mix of their Actinic white and Super Actinic Blue. Same goes for the VHO’s. I found out long ago what works on average for myself and anyone who gave it a try per my recommendation has never complained about that combination. Some will disagree and that’s fine, do want you feel works for you but you have to have something to compare it to other then data and research unless you’re in a lab under perfect conditions.

As for my lighting/bulb choices? Power Compacts are junk always have been and will be. With proper bulbs they make decent actinic if that’s all you have. T5’s are coming along but again, I'd only recommend them with the right bulbs. Given my choice, VHOs are what I’d use if I were dealing with tube type bulbs. LED’s are nowhere near ready for me to depend on. So at the end of all this until I see how the new Tek works out for a buddy I’ll stay with my M/H’s and VHO actinic and with the SPS 14K and URI VHO’s. It works the best all around for me.

 

had metal halides....i dont know if you remember one time that were were talking and I said for some reason maricultured corals in my tank just brown out...They stay healthy as far as growth and polyp extension but lose color...Switched to the 8 lamp T5 setup and what do you know...My maricultured corals are coloring up VERY nicely! so forget about lab research and internet collection of numbers and data. Look at my corals when they were under metal halides w/ T5 actincs and look at them under T5's alone. There is my basis of comparison! Now dont get me wrong i have seen MANY beautiful corals that were run on straight metal halide with no actinic supplementation lighting at all. So my point is there are many ways to skin a cat. Both T5's and metal halides are proven to work to maintain any light demanding species that are kept in the home aquarium. You just gotta find which works for you.

 

Really good info Tangster, Thanks! I'm saving for the MH's and vho actinics. I've got 120.00 so far. I so tempted to buy corals.

Is that your Lesson? If yes(and I understood all of it thank you, you didn't confuse me! LOL) then would you pick someone to do another lesson. Choose what lesson and which person will write it. Pick them because you think they know a lot about the subject!

That person should make his/her own thread and title it:

Making a Reef, Lesson___________


They would need to fill in the blank and then write their lesson.

If you want to take your lesson on bulbs, and make it your own thead, feel free to copy and paste it into a thread of your own, with Bulbs as the lesson or you can leave it here and I'll put, "& Bulbs" in the title....

am I confusing anyone?

 

I'll be getting a set or two like we just got you in the near future I'll use them on the things I'm going to set up here like we where talking about the other day when you where here , But since I went to these SPS 14 K I got really colorful corals until the Biopsies got a hold late last fall then I as you know had little to do with it at all untill a month or two ago . But I'd never try to run any M/H less I had damn good and strong Actinic . It make me almsot cringe when I see people bragging I run 20K with no actinic it tells me what they don't no.
Craig hey you do the T5 thing you know more about the effects of them on corals then anyone I know of and would pay attention too about them. Justin Credable aka Grable was just getting his going last time he was in the shop taking the corals DNA for His and I think it was Calfio's study and coloney I.D . Oh that tank we had set up for a Q/T when you got there I had the 4 bulbs T5's on and I guess that one just put a bad taste in my mouth for T5 the mushroom could not live under them it was a taller tank and they where weak hitting the bottom when that old 90 had them it was so dark I needed a flashlight to see if the T5s where on even

 

Well the thing with that setup was the way the T5's were wired and the ballast was a POS. (at least by the time i got there but who knows what was messed with from the time they were setup till the time i saw them hehehe) If i remember correctly every two lamps were wired in series because the ballast didnt have enough juice to run the lamps in parallel. Not to mention those were giessman lamps Check out the tek light and you will be very impressed! I also have the Aquactinic TX5 fixture over my 36 gallon tank. That light is awesome but the rest of the system is garbage. So SPS dont do very well in there but it has nothing to do with the lighting. On the other hand the LPS are doing great in that tank but they are much hardier corals to begin with.