Actinic Blue Lamps question

[rcoughtrey]

I currently have 4 Actinic Blue Lamps with my 250 hallies. However I was looking at stocking for backup bulbs and noticed that some people mix the blue lamps with a purple one.

Can anyone give me any experience with the use of these purple lamps. What sort of colour change do they inflict and are there any downsides.

[rcoughtrey]

Ok google may have answered. Some posts state these are mostly used with freshwater tanks with a lot of plant life.

Google could be wrong though

[seapug]

If you have room for 4 actinics, I would highly recommend replacing one of them with a KZ Fiji Purple or something similar. It will really bring out the red and pinks that get washed out under all actinic light. They also bring out some really cool subtle shades in Acros and other SPS corals that you never knew were there.

I used a mixture of actinic and Fiji purple for a while on my 90 gallon peninsula tank, but I only have room for 2 T5s in my fixture, so half the tank was pure actinic and the other half was Fiji Purple. It looked interesting but since it was a 50/50 kind of thing, they didn't "blend" like they would with 4 T5s.

[rcoughtrey]

Sounds good, would you recommend maybe running

Blue
Purple
Blue
Pruple

[crvz]

that may not be a bad pattern, but can you be more specific about which bulbs you want (brand and model, in lieu of just generic colors)?

[rcoughtrey]

Not sure right now, I will have to look and research what is out there

[greech]

ATI has a Purple Plus bulb which has a bit of pop to it and think has a fair amount of PAR as well. May be worth a look.

[Reverend Reefer]

i like like majority ATI blue plus and one fiji purple. what K are your halides?

[rcoughtrey]

250 watts

[bertoni]

The actinics are for looks, so I'd try experimenting a bit with some setups, and see what looked good to me. The animals don't care.

[rcoughtrey]

That's true, will head out to premium aquatics here in Indiana and see what they got in stock

[rcoughtrey]

Fitted Fiji purple and it looks fantastic. My orange monti looks beautiful. Time to get more red and pinks in the tanks.

I also noticed that the green/yellow candy cain seem to have more colour depth.

Thx all