Ace25's 75G Build Thread

Looking great Ace. I'll be very interested to see what you learn about PAR output from solartubes.
 
You'll like the look better once they burn in and get whiter. Is that shot with the t5's on or off?
 
BTW, you can always check the spectral plots of a bulb via sanjay's or the mfg to see how much blue spectrum irradiance is being emitted from your "daylight" bulb. It's probably half of that emitted from a dedicated actinic. But, if you're trying to determine what combo of bulbs will achieve the perfect balance I think the PAR meter can get you very close to your goal. Install only the daylight, take the PAR reading. Then, remove the daylight and install all the actinics it takes to match the daylight reading. Do they make "daylight" bulbs in dedicated nm's like the do actinics? You'll probably end up with a purple cast once the balance is achieved. You can add whatever bulb to make it more pleasing to the eye, just compensate for the excess blue or daylight irradiance levels indicated in the mfg spectral graphs.
 
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Really hard to tell in the pics. I made sure camera used exact same settings and no touchup. In person the difference is greater. More pop from the colors on the corals and brighter purples in the tank. You can barely see the difference on the back wall with the coralline. Left side without, coralline looks more pinkish, just barely.
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Here is the UV Aquasun. Actually, has a spike in the center in the "bad area". For looking as red as it does it sure has a lot of the blue side in it. Has nothing really in the top end either for the A part, hmmm, seems like a pretty bad bulb looking at the chart. Sold as a 10k but none of the properties. Great page with breakdowns. http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2009/3/review

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Here is the UV Super Actinic bulb
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Check out this one as well. Shows the Super Actinic with the least PAR actually has the most usable light.
Photosynthetically Usable Radiation (PUR) output of UV Lighting lamps. Note that the Super Actinic produced the least amount of PAR, but the most PUR
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strange, it almost seems like it should be reverse bc the shadows are darker on the right. look at the cave, bottom right of the sand bed, and the black around the magnafloat. perhaps the auto white balance changed something. Anyhow, I'm sure the eye perceives the difference better.

Is the sponge collar over the vortek typical? I usually don't see that.
 
I think you'll find that all daylight bulbs have more blue in it than all other spectrums; however, they include spectrums of green red yellow. Whereas actinics have spectrums primarily irradiating it's blue designation.
 
I have seen it on a few. My cleaner wrasse was getting too close for comfort when it ramped up all the way. It came with one in the box so I put it on. Doesn't seem to affect anything flow wise.
 
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