Actinic bulbs

[elusive_fish]

I'm in the process of setting up my first marine tank and as my current T8 bulbs are old I went to a local lighting shop to see if they had suitable high K bulbs. I got one rated at about 10k and an 'actinic', which they said is usally talked about in terms of wavelength ie nm than kelvin rating.

The actinic light is almost more violet than blue. I was going to post a pic of it, but for some reason the photo does make it come across far more blue than in person. Is this 'normal'? Are actinic lights for aquarium usage different from general usage lights, for places like dark rooms? Will this be good for coral growth and showing off the tank inhabitants?

[Ira]

I'm in the process of setting up my first marine tank and as my current T8 bulbs are old I went to a local lighting shop to see if they had suitable high K bulbs. I got one rated at about 10k and an 'actinic', which they said is usally talked about in terms of wavelength ie nm than kelvin rating.

The actinic light is almost more violet than blue. I was going to post a pic of it, but for some reason the photo does make it come across far more blue than in person. Is this 'normal'? Are actinic lights for aquarium usage different from general usage lights, for places like dark rooms? Will this be good for coral growth and showing off the tank inhabitants?

Sounds like you have an actinic. There are basically two types of actinic bulbs. One is a relatively normal fluoro around 20K. There's white actinic: It looks like a very white with a blue tinge tube. Then blue actinic: which is basically nothing but blue, which is what you have. That's probably the real actinic.

I'm not convinced taht they're better for coral growth given that they usually have a very low PAR rating. But that do really bring out the blues in the tank.

Want to make your tank look really good you need a black light.

[spoon]

will look nice make corals appear to flourecse . but for a fowlr its only useful for veiwing