i have 10k currently on tank have some questions about 20k's

[james454]

I currently have 3 mogul base 175 10k hamilton bulbs also has 2 110 wat vho actenics.
i was given 3 20k hamilton bulbs. if i use these bulbs will it be too much blue with the actenics?
if i bought diffrent vho would it look better?
if by doing this would it improve my tank at all? ( is it even worth messing with )
thanks for any thoughts

 

[acrylic51]

How old are the original 10k MH bulbs? What are you running as far as bulbs for your VHO's? 10k's are going to be white and your 20k's will be really blue. What are you trying to achieve with replacing the bulbs? Are you wanting more growth or just more appealing to the eye? If your looking for growth you'd want to stay with the 10k MH. If you want more coloration the 20k would be the choice.
Different bulbs will give different colorations on certain ballasts. For example Radium 20k's are super sweet, but the ballast of choice to get the most out of these bulbs are HQI ballasts. Another example would be XM bulbs.....They run best on magnetic ballasts vs. electronic ballasts. XM 10k's have super par readings while the 15k and 20k have great color, but not so hot par readings.
Hopefully someone will chime in here....I can't remember the site use to have it saved on my old computer, but there was a guy who had a site something like cndarian (sp) that compared alot of bulbs and their colorations on certain ballasts. Hopefully someone else has seen the site. It's been around awhile.

 

[flower]

I don't know much about all the spectrums and such...I have 2 X 175 MH and have 14K bulbs.....here is a picture of how the blue 14K with 65w actinic looks like.

 

[acrylic51]

Sorry for not being much help the other day, but I found the site I was thinking of and you can check out the site, and if you look on the right side of the screen you see links to his bulb/ballast testing and comparison.... The site I was thinking about was CnidarianReef dot com. HTH