Newbie Zoanthid question.

[jimbo222]

How long will a zoanthid survive without the actinic bulbs
Only under 12k metal halides?
Are actinic bulbs a must?
thanks

jim

[subman]

Actually actinic bulbs are only for appearances. The light spectrum closer 10k is what they use for photosynthesis. We add actinic to make it look nicer.

[jimbo222]

thanks for quick reply.
i just have an issue with my t5 section on my light fixture.so got a little concerned.
i got a lot more reading to do...:neutral:

[lorenz0]

edit:

sorry, re-read the original post

for MH actinic's are great and pull the color out of coral. +1 for keeping them in

[Drock169]

your halide is much more important than the t5 portion of the lights

[jimbo222]

AAAHH so angry sorry.. i just saw my little maniac crab pulling my small zoa colonie into his rock ,....wth
i caught the bugger Please take him i have two of them i dont trust them now i put them in my overflow for now if anyone wants..i just bought them today

back to topic first reef tank new system running for a month now with only live rock . so.. i decided to put some color in it.i beleive the cycle is done.all my readings are 0. and some green leafy stuff is growing on the rocks.so i went to the store and got a good deal on a very nice green zoa . my first coral.and i thought hey ill put a couple of crabs in too.. they are pretty cool... so..now i have a zoa in two pieces one still glued to the rock because the crab riped it.
my light is a giesmann 150 mhx2 and 4 54 actinic but im waiting on a wire to run the t5
well first newbie lesson no crabs.. at least i saw him:smile:

[Eyford01]

Ooh neat! I like crabs, what kind are they? But for the zoas they should be just fine under your lights, mine grow well under a single 250w halide bulb, I have a couple extra little zoa frags if you wanna trade em for the crabs

[chris88]

The post about actinic being use only for appearance and not used for photosynthesis couldn’t be more wrong. Corals use a large portion of the color spectrum from actinic and beyond. They use purple, blue, red, yellow, etc. If you look at most studies corals use blue and purple better then most colors, and guess what color actinic falls under, blue and purple. Corals have adapted to using blue light because water filters out the majority of reds and other corals and at the depths where most corals are found the majority of light is blue.

Also, t5’s are just as effective as Mh at growing corals. This has been proven a 100 times over. To answer you question directly your corals do not need actinic light to photosynthesis, but yes they do use that range of nM. 10k still has a large portion of blue so your corals will be fine. They keys is to give coral a broad range of the color spectrum at the right intensity. This is why T5’s have an advantage of Mh because of the choice and variety in bulb combinations.