VHO Bulb Selection

[Kinesthesia]

After much debate (with myself), I have all but decided to get myself a canopy and retro four VHO bulbs in it, rather than go with PC or MH.

Question is: what bulb combination do I go with ? I saw somewhere that an online vendor recommended two Actinics and two 50/50's for reef and two Actinics and two Whites for fish. I'm wondering how accurate that is.

I have a 120 gallon tank (4'x2'x2') with a few softies, and honestly doubt I'll ever get into hard corals, if that makes a difference.

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I was sure that anything this expensive and addicting was illegal... I keep waiting for the ATF to kick my door down and grab my protein skimmer...

[Rick O]

I'm glad you brought this topic up. I have the same tank as you and I also went with the configuration you mentioned (with the exception that I also have two NO bulbs, one blue and one actinic/white). I was keeping soft corals and a few LPS but I've recently started adding SPS. I first noticed that at night from outside of the house there was a very dark blue glow coming from the room where the tank is. Even though it didn't look that blue when you were standing in front of the tank. I replaced the NO actinic with an actinic/white and also replaced one of the VHO actinic/white with a URI Aquasun.

Visually I can't tell any difference in the tank and it hasn't been long enough to tell if the corals will react differently. The Aquasun appears to be a brighter light and if my corals continue to do well I'll probably replace the other actinic/white with an Aquasun.

Rick

[Doug1]

I run the 4 bubl combo as well, Started with 2 actinic and 2white actinic then tried the Aquasun in place of one of the 50/50. I thought the original configuration was a little too blue for my taste and will add the other Aquasun when I can get them. My LFS has had some trouble getting them through their normal dry goods supplier. They are available else where but then shipping addes to the price unless ordering a lot.
I think the Aquasun(6500K) should be good bulb for lagoonal dwelling soft corals. It wouldn't surprise me if the same higher Kelvin=less PAR seen in MH lamps holds true to some extent with the VHO also. I do know that our eyes arent the best judges of brightness, especially across the color spectrum. Either combnation will work out I think, its pretty much a matter of whats pleasing to your eye, as long as the critters thrive. I know Bill has said that the corals need for actinic light is overstated(correct me if I'm wrong) so if thats the case you should be able to use all 50/50 and still have good growth. Is the actinic really essential to coral or do we just want to see the flourecent effect it seems to bring out?

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I dont advocate holding marine creatures for ransom but......since you asked
Doug, plank owner
http://hellreef.homestead.com/index.html

[Rick O]

Doug,

My un-scientific theory is that the 50/50 bulb has a fair amount of blue in it. If you use two actinics and two actinic/white aren't you leaning way over to the blue side?

I'm currently setting up another prop tank and am going to use (2) of the Lights Of America 65w flourescent fixtures over it. It's a 65k bulb. BTW, I should have pics of it by tonight. It's going to be sweeeet.

Rick

[Markv]

Hey guys,

While I do not use VHO's, I'd like to throw in some input. Actinics provide lots of light in the 420 nm range, which is around the area where many zooxanthallae receive photosynthetic energy. But a 65k bulb will often contain more par than an actinic bulb due to having a slightly larger range of photosynthetic available wavelengths. At least that is how I understand it. Essentially, bulbs in the 65k range is all you need really, but actinics help bump up the spectra that are absorbed by chlorophyll.

Also, according to Icecap, their ballasts will light a NO bulb to VHO intensity without ill effects. The drawback is that the bulbs run a little hot. Anyways, if that's the case, you can pick up some $4 65k bulbs made by GE at HD.

For more reading go to the following links(warning, there are alot of flames in these links due to this being a heated debate. )

http://64.70.231.64/ubb/Forum1/HTML/012997-3.html

http://www.escribe.com/pets/reefkeepers/m7185.html http://www.escribe.com/pets/reefkeepers/m7561.html http://www.escribe.com/pets/reefkeepers/m8368.html

[Kinesthesia]

I thought the AquaSun was a 10k bulb ( http://www.uriworld.com/PRODUCTS/mlam.htm ).

To fine tune this interesting discussion, I'm leaning toward two AquaSun and two SuperActinic, based on the input provided in this thread so far. (Subject to change without notice )

So, front to back, do I want... Actinic, AquaSun, Actinic, AquaSun if my corals are more towards the front? Or vice versa? Or does it really not make a bit of difference...

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I was sure that anything this expensive and addicting was illegal... I keep waiting for the ATF to kick my door down and grab my protein skimmer...

[Markv]

Kelvin ratings are used as a selling point. A few years ago, URI stated the Aquasuns were 65k. Now they say 10k. I guess they just call it whatever kelvin rating is hip at the moment. That's why there are so many different 10k metal halide bulbs out there. They all say 10k, but some look like 20k, while others look like 65k. It's just a marketing scheme. To me, the Aquasuns look more like 65k. I know Coralife now regards their actinic whites as 10k. So confusing.

[Doug1]

Rick I agree that combination is a little too blue for my eye. I think you could be sucessfull using 4 of the white actinic bulbs but the 03 seems to really make the flourescent color of some corals pop out.
Mark I know a lot of people use the 250 Iwasaki MH with a couple no actinics which is a drop in the bucket compared to 500 watts of MH. Other people use the MH with blue and white VHO and that works too. Too many choices. I have driven the NO bulbs on my Icecaps and yes they do get hot but not a lot hotter than the URI bulbs. I can touch either one for short period but not for long. I used a pair of regular Corallife 03's for 19 months on an IC430. They finally burned out and were replaced with URI. I meaasured the light output on the normal output bulbs in typical shoplight fixture and than a gain after using the same bulbs on an icecap ballast. Using both an in camera meter and a Minolto Pro light meter at 3' the increase in light readings came out to about 1.2 F stops which means the output was more than double to near vho levels. I did the same test with the 03 bulbs and noticed some increase(forgot the figures) but that spectrum isn't the same as visible light camera meters are weighted for so its not a valid test. So bottom line is you could get the actinic lights which are spendy whether you get NO or VHO and use the GE ultra daylights at about $5 a piece, even if you change the GE's every six months its still $10 a year compared to about $30 for the URI bulb. The old ones would work fine over a refugium

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I dont advocate holding marine creatures for ransom but......since you asked
Doug, plank owner
http://hellreef.homestead.com/index.html

[Doug1]

Not too long ago as I reccall the Aquasun was listed as a 6500K. The actinic white seems more of a 10000K but hard telling what method is used to determine it. Personally I feel the Aquasun is a more yellowish light like the GE bulb. Again thats just my perception, our brain interpret visual stimuli and feed it to us in forms that are familiar, so its subjective whether one person likes a bulbs effect or not. I am not sure if there is a standardized testing protocol used be everyone but I tend to doubt it.
As far as bulb placement I go white,blue,white,blue front to back. If I had a lot of flourescing corals I might reverse it. I dont think it makes a lot of difference, its all lighting up the same small area

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I dont advocate holding marine creatures for ransom but......since you asked
Doug, plank owner
http://hellreef.homestead.com/index.html

[Doug1]

I read through the reefs thread and a couple of HArkers and now I have a headache Its been a long time since school so I cant fully follow a lot of the physics and stuff but it would seem that most of the common lighting scenarios we use will work if you allow for differences in organisms specific needs.

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I dont advocate holding marine creatures for ransom but......since you asked
Doug, plank owner
http://hellreef.homestead.com/index.html

[Alice]

Fun with lighting

I have a tall canopy with the standard lift-up top but it also has swing out "cupboard doors" on the front of the canopy that make for easy access...without having to lift up the lights so I can see what I'm doing

At any rate; I had this bright idea to replace the cupboard doors with stained glass panels. Which I am doing; the glass was delivered to me on Thursday, a friend of mine is framing the panels for me soon. It's going to look way kewl when it's done

The thing I never considered (duh) until Doug and Tom W. pointed it out to me was that I'm going to lose light intensity through the panels. My canopy was never very "reflective" so I'm going to upgrade that when I do my light change outs in the next month and hope that will offset the loss in light intensity.

I'm running 4x110w VHO's by the way; 2 50-50's, one daylight and one 03.

~Alice

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Reefkeeping is my life; I can't afford a hobby too!

[This message has been edited by Alice (edited 02-04-2001).]

[Kinesthesia]

I took a look at the canopy that I'm looking to purchase to mount these in, and I'm guessing that one bulb will end up on the part that I flip up. Are the actinics less blinding that the whites ?

And based on the discussion above, should I be considering NO bulbs or some other VHO bulbs such as Coralife instead of URI's ?

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I was sure that anything this expensive and addicting was illegal... I keep waiting for the ATF to kick my door down and grab my protein skimmer...

[Doug1]

The actinic is probably a little easier on the eyes but its still bright
As far as the actinic choices the difference in cost between say a corallife NO and the URI is pretty negligible. I'd get the URI
You can use the $5 GE 6500k as a substitute for the spendy aquarium specialty bulbs. They might not last as long but at the price you can get 3 years worth for the cost of one URI
You can always try it and see if you like the effect, extra bulbs are good anyway the Icecap wont fire if one bulb fails
First time one quit and the whole thing went off I had horible visions of sending it back for warrenty but another bulb got it back up in no time

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I dont advocate holding marine creatures for ransom but......since you asked
Doug, plank owner
http://hellreef.homestead.com/index.html