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PC lighting for CP terrarium???

Jeremy had some spare PC lighting in his reef stuff.....we only use MH, T-5s and VHO for our reefs....he does use PC lighting on his macroalgea refugiums that are plummed into his main tank. The reason he uses PCs on just his macroalgea is because of PCs ability to grow plant life so well. So we got to thinking....maybe they will work for the CPs.

There are 4 65watt bulbs with ballasts and everything....2 bulbs are 10,000K and 2 bulbs are blue bulbs that everybody uses in tanks, Jeremy said they are a bulb that peaks at 450 nm. They are sometimes refered to as actinic 03 blue bulbs (a real actinic 3 bulb actually peaks at 420nm but these bulbs we have are real close to the same). They make corals and macroalgea grow like mad at the same time it makes all the colors glow florescents. The 10,000K are a real crisp white not yellow like a 5,000K but are very good bulbs and are very high in PAR.

My question I am sure PC lighting will be great for CPs but are these bulbs going to work or should we buy a 5,000 to 5,500 K bulbs to put in them, which is closest to true sunlight on midday over the reefs. Which would be close to a standard MH bulb.

Or, should we lean more towards a 3,000K which is more yellow/red and closer to that of a HP sodium lamp? Does anybody have any experience growing CPs under PC lighting?

Thanks;
Victoria
 
The 10,000K are fine, and the PC's should work great (you might find yourself moving plants closer to them for more intense color, but that's not really a problem)

10000K can "wash out" the red pigments so it would be a good idea to replace the actinics with a couple of 6500K lamps. That way you get the best of both worlds, 2 10000K's to have a nice crisp light and 2 6500's to balance out the red spectrum.

The actinics won't work unfortunately. You can replace them with whatever you'd like. If you are interested in flowers, replace them with a lower kelvin lamp. I reccoment against using 3,000K. That's pretty ugly to me.

Trust me... HPS suck! lol. I was given an HPS fixture for christmas and I couldn't grow anything but flowers. Any vegetative growth was etoliated and hideous. I replaced it with a metal halide conversion lamp and couldn't be happier
smile.gif


Replace the actinic 03 with a 5000K, 5500K, 6500K, just whatever looks good to you in combination with the 10000K's.
 
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