Kessil

anyone using 14K bulbs?

My 400W Radium exploded today, major fish splash I suspect as the glass is cracked where a salt splash can be seen. So it's decision time. I know I want to go to 10K or 14K for better PAR. Right now I have 10K XM/s on the sides of my 155 bowfront and the 400W radium in the middle. My blue and green corals look best in the middle under the radium, but the yellow, red and pink corals are far better looking under the 10K's.

Would 14K be a good compromise, or do I really need to go with 10K to get the vibrant pink out of stylophora and birdsnests? I only have 80W of NO actinics and not much room to add more, so I'm leaning toward the 14K for the extra blue look.

If anyone is using Aquaconnect bulbs, where did you get them? They seem to be hard to find.
 
I'm using 14k Hamiltons on the 72 that you saw. Previous bulbs were Aqualine Busch 10k. I like the white blue look of the 14k. The 10k were a little too yellow for me.

My purple edge caps looked better under 10k though. So the 14k were slightly disappointing in that regard.
 
Over my main tank I have 10k on one side, and 14k on another, although I'm currently experiencing another nutrient issue (I think) so I can't really say which is better. I do have a 14k 175w bulb over my 10g prop tank (like 2 feet over it), and it's fairly good, haven't really seen a lot of growth, but then again I haven't really been measuring things. They do make corals look prettier though since there is that spike in blue that hits the fluorescence without the need for actinic.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Over my main tank I have 10k on one side, and 14k on another, although I'm currently experiencing another nutrient issue (I think) so I can't really say which is better. I do have a 14k 175w bulb over my 10g prop tank (like 2 feet over it), and it's fairly good, haven't really seen a lot of growth, but then again I haven't really been measuring things. They do make corals look prettier though since there is that spike in blue that hits the fluorescence without the need for actinic.

Never knew you use metal Halides, mike.

Johara, are you using SE or DE? If you are using DE, go with the Phoenix. If you are using SE, go for Reeflux 10 or 12k. The 12k from what I understand looks similar to Phoenix. The 10k is really nice white and not as blue as the 12k/14k Phoenix.
 
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