# Actinic lighting in fresh water tanks ?



## candymancan (24 Dec 2014)

Hey guys I know actinic is primarly used for salt water corals and stuff..  However ive noticed a lot of LED fixtures that you buy today are mainly white leds with blue leds (unless you buy the full spectrum lights) lets just say a 36 inch LED light will have I dunno 100 leds..  And it seems like 80 of them are white and 20 are blue..  (Just using an example)

I bought one of these basic LED fixtures from fluval the ECO brand for my 30g tank as its duel T5NO 6700k fixture burned out..  Immediately I noticed the LED light wasn't nearly as bright... However...  the colors in the entire tank... aren't washed out yellowish/green anymore and instead the gravel, neons, and all the other fish are glowing big time and it looks awesome..

I decided to try this with my discus tank, it has a duel 65w power compact fixture and  I had a duel Pink plantgrow bulb in there, with a duel 6700/6700 bulb..  It looked ok but the pink really washed the colors out...  And with just the 6700/6700 light on the tank looked yellowish..  Every tank I have has either T5's or Power compacts... and they are all 6700 or 6700/10k combo's...  All tanks look "natural" but are all a tad yellow.. and no it isn't the water.

So I put a duel Actinic light in the discus tank (took out the pink bulb) and now its running a 6700/6700 and a 420/460 actinic combo  (its the only actinic light I had the 420 is more of a purple bulb so ignore that but the 460 is bright blue)..

And wow.... my discus tank looks awesome... my 25  Neons/cardinals are glowing blues and reds...  All my discus like my blue turquoise and Leopard snakeskin, and my blue snakeskins are all poping out in colors.
Tank looks more blueish but the yellowish tint is gone and my red plants are glowing as well.
What do you guys think ?  Has anyone used Actinic lights with daylight bulbs to pop your fresh water fish and plants ?  To me this isn't any different then these LED lights from Fluval and other brands that use white and blue leds. Am I right ?

Because I took that new LED light over my discus tank to see what it looked like and while not as bright as my PC light it looked the same with me using my actinic/6700


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## Tim Harrison (24 Dec 2014)

Sounds good, shows us a pic or two then...


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## ceg4048 (24 Dec 2014)

candymancan said:


> Has anyone used Actinic lights with daylight bulbs


Yes, every combination has been used. Please review the sticky at the top of this section for hints as to the visual effects for different bulb combinations. Use any bulb you want. Kelvin numbers are an illusion.

Cheers,


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