What bulb combinations are you using?

[ShadowMac]

I am curious what bulb combinations people are using. Please share your bulb types.

Currently in my ATI I am running two flora pink bulbs and two mid day 6500k bulbs. I have considered trying all daylight bulbs or losing a flora bulb for a blue one OR all daylight and one blue. Not sure what would look best. My LED lights on my cube have a combination of mostly daylight LED's with a few blue ones. I do like the look of it, which has gotten me thinking about changing things up.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[Gerryd]

Gmans aquaflora and midday, and ATI purple. ATI blue on the way and ge starcoats to come I hope.

[dutchy]

All 6500K.

[Yo-han]

A mix, 2 dennerle amazon, 2 giesseman midday, 1 grolux and 1 10.000K aqua light...

[Biollante]

6500 & 6700K

With a couple of exception just trying them out...

[GillesF]

Does the colour play a role in plant health/growth? I always thought it was just for the looks ...

[dutchy]

Maybe it does, but I think the differences are marginal and not noticeable unless you do specific dry weight tests.

[Aquadream]

I use 2 x Osram Skywhite 880/ 8000K and 1 x Silvania Grolux as combination on all of my planted tanks.
From all lights I have tested in my experience this combination is the best for growing plants and appearance wise.

[Paul G]

In high light, high tech 210 gallon with a 72" x 24" footprint:

Eight lines of TrueLumen Pro, all 8000 Kelvin LED, each line consisting of one 24" 16 watt and one 36" 23 watt.

One line of three 5-module Solar Oasis LED grow lights (probably around 6500 Kelvin) totalling just under 30 watts.

Two lines of four 12" 6 watt Ecoxotic Stunner LED strips, all magenta.

Two lines of three 12" 6 watt Ecoxotic Stunner LED strips, all 8000 Kelvin.

All these are placed, after much experimentation, for best effect visually without question that sufficient light reaches everywhere in the tank for plant vigor. The 8000 K sunlight is the main source of overall brightness, and I do prefer a really bright tank. The grow lights and the magenta stunners provide warmth, and have just the right color rendition to suit my tastes. The plants like it too, from all indications.

I also use three Marineland 18" LED arrays mounted higher in the canopy for dawn/dusk, with one switched for moon also.

Everything is switched in four stages by the Neptune Apex timers to give a gradual up-down day-night cycle.

Since using all LEDs, my heat problems have all but vanished. I do use a closed canopy, so heat from the LEDs will build up in there, but with a thermostat and a few small fans, this heat is now manageable.

[dtang21]

Great thread! A few months ago, I replaced my 150w metal halide for a 4x39w ATI dimmable fixture (thanks to this forum and all the positive feedback from ATI owners). Over the past few months, I've been experimenting with different bulbs and intensities to see what kind of growth I get. So far I've only tested two configurations:

Config A - Ran this for ~2 months. Light was on for 9 hours with the lights starting at 0% to a 4 hour block of 100% and back down to 0%. To my surprise, growth was slow even though I observed a lot of pearling. Colors were not vibrant. I only got orange-ish and pink coloration in my r.macandra, r.macandra green, and aromatica in the upper portions of the plant.

1. Fish Need It 10k
2. Giesemann Aquaflora
3. Giesemann Midday
4. Giesmann Aquaflora

Config B (current) - Been using this configuration for almost 2 months now. For the first month, light was on for 9 hours with the lights starting at 0% to a 4 hour block of 50% and back down to 0%. With the lights running at a 50% max, coloration was again not spectacular. Everything stayed relatively green. The second month, I increased the max intensity to 75%. I saw a bit more coloration - more of the orange-ish and pink that I saw when I was running config A.

1. GE Starcoat 6500k
2. Giesmann Aquaflora
3. Giesemann Midday
4. Giesemann Aquaflora


Next I'd like to try swap out one of the Aquaflora's for the KZ Fiji Purple. I will probably try upping the intensity of the lights to see if that will make up for the holes in the light spectrum. Comments/advice welcome!