10000k/Actinic bulb setup

[zkirby]

Hello everyone. I have a question about the lighting in my Biocube 29. I just upgraded to the nanocustoms 4.36 kit which takes my lighting from 2x36watt 10000k bulbs to essentially 4 bulbs which I chose 2x36watt 10000k's and 2x blue actinic bulbs. I also upgraded my moonlighting to the R2 kit which gives me 2 of the origional led bulbs and 10 more in the R2 kit.

I plan to keep 2-3 fish, an anenome, clean up crew, and a few easy to keep corals as I'm just getting this tank up and running with livestock after it's been up for a year with just live rock, cleanup crew, and my fair share of green hair algae outbreaks which I hope I'm done with :).

My questions are as follow; Should I run all 4 bulbs during the day, all day? Or should I run them in seperate stages?

Do the Blue Actinic bulbs provide my livestock with beneficial rays or is that what the 10000k bulbs are doing, I ask because if they are just for looks, I find myself asking why I upgraded to 4 bulbs.

My day lights (10000k's and blue actinics) are set to come on at 08:00AM and turn off at 6:00PM and the moonlighting is set to be on opposite. Is this a good time cycle?

As for the moonlighting, are these led's just for looks or are they actually poviding my livestock with beneficial rays as well?

Any other commens or thoughts on this setup will be greatly appreciated. I know I asked a ton of questions, but I thought it would be best to get them all out at once.

Thanks in advance.

zkirby

[tat2z_21]

Hey there Kirby,
Both the 10k's and the actinics are good for coral stimulation and definately needed if you are planning to have anemone's, as they get most of their food through photosyntesis. So having all four of them on at once will be beneficial. You can have the timer bring the actinics on first then the 10ks and vise versa for the setting of the lights. As far as leds go. It is depending on if the leds are high power 3w LEDs or just your normal output LEDs (1w) If they are the high out put then it too can help however I believe that they are the 1w kind. So they would be used for night lights for aesthetic purposes and slight stimulation of your corals. Simulating a moonlight. So as it stands you have close to 140 watts of light on an 18 or 20 inch deep system (can't remember) so you are good on lighting for most of your LPS and anemones. Hope this helps out. Let me know if there is anything else please let me know I would love to see your tank.