Bulb Choices

[JuGgAlLiZzLe]

Hello everyone,

I bought a 125 gallon tank (6' long x 22" high x 18" deep). Full tank description in profile. This is my first tank over 55gal. Also, my first attempt with keeping some light loving critters. Bear with me I've been out of tanks for awhile and don't remember scientific names. I just want to keep the in-expensive hardy corals. I will do more research on them before I actually buy them of course.

I need a lighting mix to keep a wide variety of corals. I have a fan cooled hood that puts the lights about 10" off the water. It has 4 - MH (very yellowish light) powered by 4 IceCap 175-MHs, 2 - 4' VHOs (purple light) powered by one IceCap/URI A4 VHO, Not sure what these are but 2 - 3' double tube flor.?(very white) They appear to be powered by the little ballasts in flor. shoplights, and 4 - keychain light type blue spotlights.

The bulbs that are currently in the hood are old and unreadable.

What bulbs, color temps, etc. should I get?

Any guesses as to what the types of bulbs that give off the described light? I.E. Moonlight, 6500K, etc.

Thanks in advance

[JuGgAlLiZzLe]

Nobody can help me out?

[rdelong]

DO you want lots of Blue or are you interested more in growth rate of SPS for instrance?

[rdelong]

I read your post more carefully and I would suggest that hood has got way more light than you need. If you fire up all that you'll need a big chiller to keep the temp under control. The double tube florescent bulbs are compact florescent bulbs. The two VHO's sound like they have Super Actinic 110W bulbs in them. They would be timned to come on first asnd go off last (Dusk/Dawn). The PC bulbs sound like 96 W Daylight bulbs which you would time to come on about an hour after and turn off about an hour before the VHO's. The real question is what to do with the MH fixtures. Atfer waking everybody up with the VHO's and PC's you could turn on the MH's with something like a Reeflux 12000K bulb and shut down the VHO/PC fixtures while they are burning, onnly to turn them back on just before you shutdown the MH's after about 5-6 hours. Does this help?

[JuGgAlLiZzLe]

Yes thank you very much...I think the MH that are in there now are either 6500K or are just older than dirt because they are very yellow (hence the need for the pc's i guess). a 12000K is very blue correct? I do like the very blue appearance but I want to make sure its balanced enough for coral growth.
So i ditch the PC's and run the vho's for 2hrs before and after the 4-12000k MH's that run for 6hrs? That sound about right? Do I need to turn off the VHO's for any reason? The fan cooled hood keeps the water at a constant 80F without a chiller.

[Underwaterparadise]

12k is more on the white side then blue. 20K is about as blue as it gets. The coralvue 12k ReefLux give off a bright white color with a hint of blue but added with Actinic Fl. bulbs gives a great over all color.

And yes you need to turn the VHO's off. Your tank will do much better with periods of darkness. Fish and other animals can become stressed out if the lights are always left on IMO

[JuGgAlLiZzLe]

I'm sorry i was referring to rdelong's post where he said turn off the vho's while the halides are on :)

[rdelong]

The decision to turn the VHO's off would only be to avoid being too blue looking. My experience is that growth is impacted above about 12000K. 10000K results great growth but it's definitely more yellow and I think you'd definitely want to keep the Actinic bulbs on with 10000K.