Helios 11,000K Daylight bulb?

[Schreiber]

I'm putting together a T5/LED hybrid fixture & bought a pair of these to pair with my Mars Aqua black boxes.

They come with 2 bulbs: an 11,000K Daylight bulb & a SuperBlue bulb. Here are the spectrums:

At first, I considered swapping them out, since I couldn't find any info on them & everyone seems to run mostly/all blues in their T5 fixtures.

However, the more research I do, the more I'm leaning towards keeping them in. It sounds like their wavelength & color temperature are very much in line with natural sunlight & would be great for coral growth. But I'd like to hear some more opinions & thoughts on it.

If it helps in determining which bulbs I should keep/swap, here's my tentative lighting schedule:

9:00 to 11:00- Blue LEDs ramp up from 0-80%
11:00- Back T5 fixture comes on
12:00 to 1:00- White LEDs ramp up from 0-30%
1:00- Front T5 fixture comes on
4:00- Back T5 fixture goes off
4:00 to 5:00- White LEDs ramp down from 30-0%
6:00-Front T5 fixture goes off
7:30 to 8:30- Blue LEDs ramp down from 80-0%

Planned lighting height is 12" from the water level.

 

[F i s h y]

Bump.... anybody with some input for @Schreiber ?

 

[Shirak]

What's the spectrum on the black box? Probably don't need all the green and red from the 11k daylight unless your looking for a whiter tank. Don't the black boxes have a white channel already? I would go with the super blue.. higher blue output. If I had a choice though I would probably go with ATI Actinic which is going to give much more uv and violet which the black box and the two bulbs shown above are all pretty much lacking.

 

[Wasabi]

I would personally go with 2 blue bulbs because from experience blue gives better color to corals and less algae.

 

[Schreiber]

What's the spectrum on the black box? Probably don't need all the green and red from the 11k daylight unless your looking for a whiter tank. Don't the black boxes have a white channel already? I would go with the super blue.. higher blue output. If I had a choice though I would probably go with ATI Actinic which is going to give much more uv and violet which the black box and the two bulbs shown above are all pretty much lacking.

That's a great question I haven't been able to find a great answer to.

While this isn't an overall spectrum reading for the entire unit, here are the individual LEDs in the box:

I'm completely lacking actinic wavelengths at the moment, so I'll switch one of the 11,000k bulbs out for an ATI True Actinic for sure.

I'm thinking I'll leave it at that combo to start with & then switch the other 11,000k out for either another actinic or a blue+ if I feel like there's still too much white in the tank.

 

[Shirak]

That's a great question I haven't been able to find a great answer to.

While this isn't an overall spectrum reading for the entire unit, here are the individual LEDs in the box:

I'm completely lacking actinic wavelengths at the moment, so I'll switch one of the 11,000k bulbs out for an ATI True Actinic for sure.

I'm thinking I'll leave it at that combo to start with & then switch the other 11,000k out for either another actinic or a blue+ if I feel like there's still too much white in the tank.

Sounds like a great plan! Would love to see how things progress over time.

 

[Schreiber]

Sounds like a great plan! Would love to see how things progress over time.

I'll be making a build thread when I start constructing my new tank in a few months!

Current plan is to move at the end of the year & have my "dream tank" assembled & ready to go before-hand. So, I can just set it up there, get water in it, then just transfer my livestock, rather than dealing with moving a single tank.

Schedule at the moment:

June- Hybrid fixture construction
July- Build canopy
August-September- House hunting
October- Begin closing on a house
November- Close & set up tank
December-Move existing tank inhabitants into new home!