Need Actinic Suggestions

midgetwaiter · #1 09-26-2006, 05:56 AM

I have a home made 150w DE pendant over my 20 gal with a Ushio 10000k bulb in it. I'm very happy with this setup so far aside from the colour I get out of it. The bulb has become much more white now that I am getting close to 100 hours on it but my zoas and my lionfish both look pretty bleh under it. I'm going to put a crocea in this tank so I'm thinking that moving to a 14000k or higher bulb would not be terribly smart unless I track down a radium or something and build different fixture. Most of the other bulbs sacrifice too much PAR.

This leads me to thinking about actinics but I can't figure out a way to do it. The pendant is rectangular about 10" by 8" suspended right over the center. I tried to find a way to get a T5 strip across the back but it was getting too hot because of the MH. I am now thinking about putting a couple of PC strips running front to back on either side of the pendant. I only have a 1' to work with so I can probably only fit 13w bulbs there. I can't decide if this is worth trying or if I am not going to have enough blue coming from them to matter.

So does anyone have some ideas or am I going to have to go back to Albert and get an Aquaconnect bulb? I don't want to see his I told you so dance again

albert_dao · #2 09-26-2006, 06:52 AM

midgetwaiter · #3 09-26-2006, 07:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by albert_dao

Lol!

Thank you for your constructive suggestion. Do you have those bulbs in stock yet?

albert_dao · #4 09-26-2006, 01:27 PM

Anytime man, ahha.

1" on either side is pretty slim pickings. Why NOT just get a new bulb?

But yeah, I don't have them yet. Still expecting...

midgetwaiter · #5 09-28-2006, 06:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by albert_dao

1" on either side is pretty slim pickings. Why NOT just get a new bulb?

I've reconciled myself to spending considerable amounts of money on this hobby but spending it twice because I made a bad call the first time annoys me. I was wondering if maybe there was something like a problem with my ballast that was giving me such a yellow output so I went and did some research to find out what would be a good comparison. I pulled a spectral plot off of Sanjay Joshi's site so I could get a rough idea what the Ushio 10000k should look like compared to a Hamilton SE 10000k I happen to have around. Turns out that the CCT he measured for the Ushio bulb was more like 6500k and if I compare it against some 6500k CFs I have it's pretty much the same. Great.

I'll admit to not knowing much about MH systems but this came as a bit of a surprise, from looking at Sanjay's site nobody is really offering a true 10000k bulb but at least most of them get closer than Ushio.

WWWD · #6 09-28-2006, 07:20 AM

Stop wasting your cash on ghetto lighting.

http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merch...gory_Code=PFOp