Actinic lighting...

[Vallely4]

Ok, so I just stumbled accross this page...  its kinda boggles my mind
Alot of this lighting mumbo-jumbo does! lol

Its states something totally different than what i've heard, about Actinic being used  to mimic dawn/dusk simulation, that you have on timers usually to come on 1-2hours before daylights, and... 1-2hours after?(Not sure, I dont use fluorescent actinic lighting)

"Most fluorescent bulbs for the reef aquarium will have a rating between 6500 and 20,000 K. While the reef inhabitants would be perfectly content with just an actinic blue light, reef keepers would be disappointed with the appearance of the aquarium. The human eye is designed to use the yellow/red spectrum, so blue lighting will appear very "dim" to the eye. To the reef critters, blue light is high noon, so actinic bulbs really should not be used to simulate a sunrise/sunset with other daylight bulbs. The "bright" daylight bulbs should come on first, then the actinic."

Also this quote -
"Therefore, a 40 W actinic bulb will give a much lower lumen rating than a 40 W daylight bulb, but actually provides a higher intensity of the correct photosynthetic wavelengths."

- I though i'd heard that actinic aren't known to actually be essential to coral/invertabrates, but rather they were more that aesthetics, and to mimic natural dawn/dusk simulation

Check the link out here...
http://www.petsolutions.com/Article.aspx?id=30

can anyone make sense of that....?

[kennyman]

I totally agree that you cant estimate the impact of actincs by lumens. But that is about the only thing I found worthwhile in that article.

It will be an intersting thread I hope though. good question.


hey who turned on the actincs! 


(edit) http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2005/12/aafeature2/view?  I had  this article saved on my favorites from a while back. You'll like reading this once Valley   

more:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/2/aafeature/view
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2007/11/aafeature/view