Do you need daylight bulbs?
 

I've got a 20gallon reef tank with mixed corals. The fixture I have is running T5 bulbs and it is able to have 4 bulbs total but they've been burning out.

Since the actinic and sun wave bulbs have burnt out, the bulbs left are a coral wave and an aquablue special.

I thought this would have a negative effect on the corals but since the loss of the daylight and actinic my corals have increased in color in a very noticable way along with size and growth rate.

Any idea's why this would be the case and should I try adding more bulbs again or just leave it all as is?

Do you know what the long term affects of having just the blue and wave bulbs would be?

How do your fish and inverts look?

I have heard a few say that you can grow a reef with actinics, but those are mixed response, and loaded responses at that. since you have fish, I would "assume" you need some daylight, as they do use this for color and some vitamin content as we do (vitamin b12 for us) not 100% sure whether its good or bad to run with out, but in my opinion I would try to keep at least one day bulb running if possible, there is no reason why you couldnt use more blues then whites though, a lot of us do. My blues on my AI Sol are turned higher then my whites, and this is for color mostly

The biggest issue I see is that you said the bulbs are burning out. Florescent bulbs need to be replaced every 6-9 months. Their coral growing wavelengths degrade over time and will not produce proper light for growth after that. It should never get to the point if actually burning out.

I would replace all the bulbs as soon as possible if you want to see the corals flourish.

Also depending on what corals you have, just because the corals are puffed up and huge doesn't necessarily mean they are growing. It could just mean they are trying to maximize their surface area because they are light starved

also corals look best with less white color in the tank really makes them pop.

Lisa I find that with flouresants that your tank will have certain colors WRT the lights that you have let's look at the Daylight bulbs, its more of a 6500K and will grow algae same as the mid day bulbs. With that being said i have used the Cdn tire 6500 bulbs and grow lots of corals with them. if you can stand the color then you are GTG keep in mind. The ocean when you look at the color you see you get either a light -med blue or a mid yellow look at shallow reefs. The t-5's that your 20 gal tank has i would check to see if you can run the standard T-8's in them some of the units will allow that. but for color I would pop in if you are wanting some color and plan on staying withthe T-5's a
Coral plus
12000K x2
purple plus
that should give you a nice blue hue but not alot.


HTH

Canadian Tire sales T5HO 6500K bulbs? Or are you referring to T8's?

Okay it's a wave point fixture. Whatever the bulbs are called that go in there.
I'm very sure the corals arent expanding to get more light. They have grown new mouths in the last 2 weeks. The small polyps have multiplied 3x and all the sps are splitting.

The fish aren't acting any different than before and their colours appear more vibrant as well.

The 2 bulbs that are left are new ones.

So I'm going to stay away from white light and go with new actinic bulb and another coral growth one.

Thanks for the advise

Sorry Donny My bad T-8's and T-12's