Deep Blue Solarmax in planted tank?

[MariaJade]

Hi everyone,

I looking for a new lighting system for my aqauarium. My favorite is the Deep Blue Solarmax T5 Double Strip 36in, but I'm not sure if that's a good choice for a planted freshwater tank with live plants (red spectrum?). Any advice?

Thanks,

Maria

[Hoppy]

What are the tank dimensions, or is it a standard size and what size? From what I can tell from their illustration on their ad, the reflector is only a fair quality one, that gives you one image of each bulb at the outside of each bulb. It should work well on any 24 inch high tank, but for tanks more than 12 inches front to back depth, two fixtures might be needed to cover the whole substrate reasonably well.

[Kyrol]

I use 2 of the 36's on my 125g you'll have to replace the actinic bulb. I'm running 2 of the Deep blue professional 10k bulbs in each.

Light is good I've had to suplement them with 3 cfl fixtures and it's causing issues, but if I hadn't bought the one I would look at the HO models they sell. Better to have to much light and be able to turn it back some then not enough.

http://www.aquacon.com/T5Lighting_De...olarMaxHO.html

[MariaJade]

Originally Posted by Kyrol

I use 2 of the 36's on my 125g you'll have to replace the actinic bulb. I'm running 2 of the Deep blue professional 10k bulbs in each.

Light is good I've had to suplement them with 3 cfl fixtures and it's causing issues, but if I hadn't bought the one I would look at the HO models they sell. Better to have to much light and be able to turn it back some then not enough.

http://www.aquacon.com/T5Lighting_De...olarMaxHO.html

Is actinic light only for saltwater?

[somewhatshocked]

Yep - makes corals pop.

Though, some Deep Blue Solarmax fixtures only contain daylight bulbs - like their HE fixtures. I think it's only the HO fixtures that contain actinic bulbs.

Originally Posted by MariaJade

Is actinic light only for saltwater?

[Kyrol]

Your correct in that it's 2 of the 10k bulbs it's a nice white light everything looks nice. The moonlights are still super bright but if I hadn't bought the NO's I would have bought these.

[MariaJade]

Cool. Thanks for all your input. Last question on lighting. Is actic light the one that makes colorful fish shimmer or lets their colors pop out? I've seen some lighting that makes neon tetras look really cool. I would compare the effect to a white shirt under black light.

[Kyrol]

Originally Posted by MariaJade

Cool. Thanks for all your input. Last question on lighting. Is actic light the one that makes colorful fish shimmer or lets their colors pop out? I've seen some lighting that makes neon tetras look really cool. I would compare the effect to a white shirt under black light.

It will but it's going to make the rest of the tank look strange. It flushes out the green color but the fish do look nice with the light on them. Mad my Giant Danios look like they had holographic stickers on them. But the way it made the plants look ruined the look of the tank.