yet another lighting question

lightcs4

Loving to learn
I need to replace the 96 watt, 36" actinics in my unit. I would like recommendations regarding what to use for replacements. I was wondering if I could get one actinic and one 10K or 15K PC. I want to encourage growth (don't we all). I've done some research, but it all ends up driving me crazy. I would rather hear from experience.

Thanks.
 
Thanks. My MH is a 14K. Do you think it would balance OK with 10K on the PCs? Or maybe get one one 10K pc for the back and one 14K for the front? The MH is on for 8 - 9 hours a day, the PCs are on about 14 hours. Lighting is the one area that just plain drives me insane.
 
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I would get a 12k reeflux halide bulb to help with growth. Then I would replace the pc bulbs with 15k or full actinics depending on how blue you like your water.
 
There is a HUGE difference in performances of MH bulbs. What brand bulb are you currently using?
I would get a 12k reeflux halide bulb to help with growth.
FWIW...Reeflux are 1 of the weakest output 175w MH bulb there is. Here an article Sanjay wrote on those bulbs. From the article....
"The Coralvue 12000K lamps are also poor performers in terms of PPFD values..."
and
"There is basically nothing in these lamps that makes them stand out among the crowd of low cost, low output metal halide lamps that have recently swamped the hobby.".
Here's a few charts from Sanjay's site. PPFD - Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density, CCT - Correlated Color Temperature. This is the actual kelvin temp(color) of the bulbs.
Reeflux performance
XM performance
Hamilton performance
Iwasaki performance
 
ccCapt, thanks for that post. I switched from ushio 10k to reeflux 12k and liked the color. I was also told they were good bulbs for growth. I will be getting new bulbs shortly. What are you running?
 
I currently have the stock bulbs (Oddysea unit). The MH won't need replaced yet as I hadn't used them during the first several months as I didn't have corals. The PCs are not that old (got the unit last May), but one is already dying. I rather expected a short life with the stock bulbs, but not this short. I was leaning toward the Ushio when I replace the MH as I heard good things about them. I don't want the most expensive bulbs but not the cheapest either. 12K PCs sound like a contender. I like the 14K MH and the corals seem to like it as well (may also do 15K - not sure if it really makes a difference.

Is it best to keep both PCs the same K rating?
 
Sanjay wrote on those bulbs. From the article....
"The Coralvue 12000K lamps are also poor performers in terms of PPFD values..."
and
"There is basically nothing in these lamps that makes them stand out among the crowd of low cost, low output metal halide lamps that have recently swamped the hobby.".

I'll add -- back in August I replaced all 4 of my 250 w MH bulbs with Coralvue brand bulbs (it's what my LFS had in stock), and within 4 months, 2 of the 4 had completely burned out.

I recently ordered 4 new Ushio bulbs to replace all of them.
 
I haven't installed them yet :(

They arrived in the mail about a week and a half ago, but I can't take my lights down without help from a 2nd person, and NDB and I haven't been able to coordinate the time to do it yet. He is out of town for the next week, so it will have to wait :(
 
OK, thanks anyway. I think I'll probably go the same direction.

Sounds like 12Ks would be good. I do like a bit of blue in the color. I also don't want to beat lighting to death. I've done so much research and read a lot of posts here on LR and still find myself second guessing.
 
Just a follow-up. I ended up ordering a 10K / 6700 Current bulb for one side and a Current 420 / 460 actinic for the other side. I should have them in hand by the weekend :bounce:. I'm anxious to see how they do with the corals.
 
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