Originally posted by Nas19320
Great looking Nano there RobChuck. Your running that 13K bulb without any supplementation right? How do you like the colors that your getting from your corals, specifically your zoo's. I'm going to be switching bulbs soon and I'm trying to decide what bulb to go with, I like the colors I get with my actinics so I could get a 20K MH bulb to get the same effect but I don't want the all day blue look. Right now I have 10K's with supplementation but it really washes out the colors of my zoo's, so I have been looking at getting something in between. Are those pictures the same as what you see?
Thanks for the compliment! The MH bulb is being run unsupplemented (except for LED moonlighting) and I'm fairly pleased with the colors I'm seeing in the corals; what you see in the pics is pretty much what I see in the tank.
This is my second go-round using a mid-teen K rated bulb and the first at 250W. Before the corals were moved to this tank, they were kept under 15,000K 175W bulbs unsupplmented and had great colors. The colors of both of the bulbs are fantastic, though I'm not seeing anywhere near the growth I had when I ran 175W 10,000K bulbs with actnic PCs; even with using a 250W bulb. The jury is still out on this PFO 13,000K bulb, but I'm slowly learning why it was only out on the market for less than a year. After running the 13,000K & 15,000K bulbs, I don't think I would ever buy a bulb bluer than 14,000K, and will probably go back to 10,000K with VHO or T5 actinics.
Since setting this tank up, my orginal colony of red zoanthids with blue centers has turned a less than attractive shade of burnt orange, though a propagated colony of the same zoas looks great and is only a few inches away from the mother colony. Personally, I think the mother colony's color morphing has more to do with the move than the change in lights.
