i had some coralife 50/50 mine compact florescent screw in bulbs for my 10g after having regular bulbs in it. my swords starting dying and had tons of algae growth. the LFS i got them at was about 30mins away and i had a busy week so i picked up some marineland CF 10watt 5100k natural daylight lights. when i went to return the 50/50 lights the LFS said they could only exchange lights, whatever so i got the coralife colormax bulbs. it says they're 6700k daylight lights. i notice they're pink so i figure they will put off a pink tint. when i get him they give off a nasty orangish pink color. the marineland made the tank look so much better than the coralife. should i stick with the marineland even though they have less of a light spectrum than the coralife?
lighting question
- Thread starter HiImSean
- Start date
I disagree with that statement.
Plants do much better with bulbs in the 5500-10000k range.
I've grown plants fine with Hagen powerglo, which are rated at 18,000k I believe. I've also grown plants using Hagen's Sunglo, which are around 4,000k. Didn't really see much of a difference between them or regular full spectrums.
The thing with fluorescent lights is that different bulbs uses different phosphors to simulate the color spectrum, you can have 2 5500k bulbs with a large variance in PAR. So a full spectrum 6500k bulb may be no more effective than an 18000k bulb.
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I use a pink light (also 6700k) and I find my plants open up more, in a blossoming kind of way. I also combine my pink light with 2 regular 10'000K white tubes.
What I have noticed, is that when I use the white lights alone, my tank is too green. But when I turn on the pink light, this balances the colours in the tank - and I can spot my fish more easily.
What I have noticed, is that when I use the white lights alone, my tank is too green. But when I turn on the pink light, this balances the colours in the tank - and I can spot my fish more easily.
I think one of the main things is that light bulbs, especially for aquariums arent rated accurately. The ratings arent even true Kelvin anyhow (atleast as I am aware) they are CCT or correlated color temp. After seing some test results showing metal halide actually measuring several thousand K off thier nameplate rating I dont put much faith in the K rating. If the bulb produced light accurate to the Kelvin rating it would look like this:
Notice how there isnt pink or green or purple on their? Bulbs that appear to have the colors probably shouldnt even be given a K rating. Some say they dont like 6700K bulbs because they are too yellow compared to 10,000K. I forget if its 6700K exactly (but 6,000-some) is true white with no yellow or blue tint. So apparently our 6700K bulb isnt really 6700K or else people perception of yellow is off.
As far as PAR goes there is a 15,000K bulb that puts out more PAR than most all other bulbs of its kind (MH) between 6500K-10,000 (unfortunately in the testing few bulbs under ~8000K were tested, but still...). PAR isnt the ultimate test of photosynthetic light either.