atinic lighting

[phil1964]

How necessary are they ?
I am still cycling and have a 180 gal w/ 2 96 watt 10k daylights and 2 96 watt atinics. I personally hate the blue light. Hurts my eyes & I think drowns out some color. I have 100 pounds of LR and 200 pounds of LS and plan on fish w/ inverts and maybe an anemone and a few EASY corals. Do I really need them?

 

[nerdy]

If you plan to have any corals and want them to thrive and grow I would highly suggest putting them in!

 

[phil1964]

OK they are needed for corals.
What about anemones and LR. Does it help them?
Maybe I will keep them and just add another pair of 10k to get more white in there.

 

[juddster]

Yes it helps growth on your live rock as well!!

 

[smitty442]

lighting is very important for algea to grow and inverts and fish to thrive!!!!!!!!!!!Very important to have lighting

 

[alti]

you dont need the actinics. you can go all 10k if you like the way it looks. i seriously doubt it is drowning out the colors in the tank. it should actually make the tank more colorful and make the tank seem less yellow. the problem with the pc actinics is that the majority of them are just an 8800k blue bulb and not the true actinic 03. true actinic has no kelvin color rating. it has an infinate spectrum. if you really want to make the colors in your tank more brilliant, IMO, get the ture actinic 03 bulbs.