Question for Casey, Rick, or other iwasaki SPS owners

Geoff,

We had a discussion about lighting at the last Atlanta Reef Club meeting. My Acros look different in my wife's and son's tank. Even though the same parent colony I use 250 watt 20KXM bulbs and Lisa and Justin use PCs exclusivly. I get all three colors, Lisa still has the purple and justin's acros are brown. I am guessing mine is the most intense between the three, lisa's is second (220 +55 Watt PC 10Ks and Actinics on a 29 gal tank) and Justin has 39 watts on his 10 gal nano. I am thinking the corals just respond to different spectrums.

I do think actinics are greatly responsible. BTW I use 250 Watt XM bulb on one side of my tank and 110 Watt PCs on the other side of my 40 gal breeder.

Ray

I dunno Geoff. I'm using 250 watt Iwasaki and 110 watt actinics.

My ca and alk has been fluctuating quite a bit lately.

Your setup sounds good. I don't know why you're not getting good colors.

i have 2 175 xm 20k's and 1 250w xm 20k....i dont have a brown acro in my tank..... what spectrum are your iwasakis?? 65k? 10k?.......

I've had a few in depth discussion about lighting with a couple of people that are far more knowledgable than I am. The conclusion seemed to be that while the 6500K (or others) MH lights are great for growth it's the actinics that seem to give the best coloration.

I now have MH as well as PC lighting and from my own experience the corals under the PC actinic or 50/50 lights have the best coloration.

well after re reading your post i see you use 65k......
if you went up to 10ks the color would come..imo

Geoff its not the 65ks sometimes they brown out at first but it will come back I run the 65ks and heavy vho actinic 03s and I have loads of color calcium is at 460 just give it time are these new acros or ones you have had a while?

i was hoping to not have to get different bulbs. i see others have colour with their iwasaki's, i want it too.

G~

Casey said:

run the 65ks and heavy vho actinic 03s

Click to expand...

but an option without running heavy 03 actinics is the 10ks

mnreefman said:

but an option without running heavy 03 actinics is the 10ks

Click to expand...

Of course it is an option i did it was to yellow for me I was using Ushio bulbs i just love Actinic o3s

Casey said:

....I run the 65ks and heavy vho actinic 03s and I have loads of color.... are these new acros or ones you have had a while?

Click to expand...

what is your ratio of actinics to MH's? i am wondering if i need to add more actinics. my ratio is .4, Rick's is .44, just wondering if i need to get closet to .5 for the colours to start coming out more.

most of them are new. new i mean within a couple of months. i do notice that one that is 4 months old may be blueing up each day.

thanks,

G~

yes i love actinics as well....thats why i went with the xms....

Geoff I run 2 vhos bulbs for every one MH bulb soI have 4 vhos and 2 MH bulbs,Im telling you give them time and they will color
up sometimes they just brown out at about 2 wekks after you add them but slowly A cool color will come back.

Clint I ordered the xms to play with will post pics of how blue when ups deliveres them

yay

Casey-will do.

thanks!

G~