extreme lighting. suggestions please ?

G

GoodBud

i have a 500 gallon reef tank 8ft long x 4ft tall x 2.5ft wide large rock formation with several newly added corals including zoos, frogspawn, torch coral, yellow polyps, and various mushrooms. i am getting ready to replace my mh bulbs not sure what spectrum i have currently its very blue im guessing 14k or so. over the tank i have four 96w actinic power compacts and three 400w metal halides. i would like to keep things such as xenia acraporas and other high lighting corals in the tank eventually. so my question is this. what spectrum or combination of spectrum bulbs would users on this site suggest for such a tank. currently im thinking of going with dual 14k bulbs on the outer edges and a 5500k for the center any comments or suggestions would be great curious what others would use. thanks
 
i picked up aquamax 14k (ice cap ballasts) they put out awesome coloring and in my opinion put out more light that reeflux 12k

color of the bulb also depends ont eh ballast you are running as the same bulb on two different brand ballasts will not look the same

just a suggestion i wouldnt stack your liverock like that as if it falls your corals would be crushed
 
its been rearranged several times, that stacking was the initial setup im horrible and stacking it to look good so its gone through several changes since then, some of it is held together with zip ties. still working on a good stacking that i like
 
my recomendation for SE mogul type 14k aquamaxx if you run de hqi i would go 14 phoenix. if you are set to go something different in the middle i would go 10k not 5500k as that would be to yellow
 
yeah i figured it might be as well, the only reason i had considered it was things i have read saying it was really good for coreline growth, need to find a lighting shop with all the different spectrums lit up so i can see em i guess.
 
there is a dfwmas tank tour around end of feb so you can check out different members light systems to get a good vibe on which bulbs and combination to choose. Franks Tank in Ft worth runs a few systems with mh only no supplementation so you can check his store out.
 
I would be much more inclined to go with 12-14K~ish MH Bulbs and dumping the PC's for T5's. The T'5 will give you a better overall coverage and the color selection of T5's is alot better. You can also check the LFS's and see what bulb/ballast combo's they're running. I would not go any lower than 400W as the tank is 4' deep.
 
I over read that you were running 400 watt ballasts actually 400 watt 12 k reeflux are rated really well. 250 watts are not alot of par needed for your tank
 
Don't mean to steal thread but can anyone conclude if the new aquamaxx 14K DE bulb perform better than phoenix 14K DE? The same?

Here is the link:

http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_AquariumPage.aspx?PageAlias=aquarium_marine_depot_newsletter_emailed_20090227&utm_medium=mdemail&utm_term=mdnl09
 
from what i heard the aquamaxx was designed from old Phoenix employees.

to me they look very similar to phoenix bulbs just cheaper as they are on sale at marine depot. Also the same time aquamaxx bulbs came out phoenix came out with SE bulbs.

I am getting great results with my bulbs alot of browned out corals i pick up here and there are starting to color up and my corals are starting to pop in color
 
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