Looking for advice

[whatcaneyedo]

Color temperature for reef aquarium bulbs is expressed on the kelvin scale. 10000k, 14000k and 20000k are typical bulb colour temperatures marketed by manufacturers. Actinic bulbs and others that don't produce colour temperatures within that range may look nice to us but don't produce very much useful light (if any) for coral. Its also important to change your bulbs at least once a year if not more often as their colour spectrum will shift and their intensity will decline over time.

But as elias pointed out, If you have a problem with your water quality specifically nitrite, nitrate or phosphate it won't matter how good your lighting, water flow and other water chemistry parameters are. So you may want to find those out first.