My 20 Long With MH Lighting!

Everyone,

And away we go. Went from 130 watts of PC to 350 watts of MH. My camera doesn't know how to deal with the brightness so if anyone has a Canon Powershot and has MH lighting, let me know what best settings are. Anything even remotely light in color is getting washed out in the picture. At any rate, I love the halide lights. These pics were taken less than an hour after the lights came on so corals were still coming out but you get the idea anyway. My frogspawn in this light is breathtaking. The green is just amazing. The wellsi under the halides is a gorgeous salmon color and the green plate coral is such a bright neon green I almost need shades to look at it . The green in the platygyra and candy cane is glowing too. Just amazing. Shimmer is really cool too.

Anyway, here are some pics for you:

Now that the halides are here, this is going to be something special. His tips are already turning a cool bluish-purple.

The bubble really glows under the halides:

A few top down pics:

Caught my sun coral before he went back in.

bootiful.

More pics later this afternoon as everyone was growing bigger under the halides.

I messed around with the white balance on the camera and I am getting closer I think to how it looks in RL. The camera really wants to wash out anything that is lighter in color so that is an obstacle I am trying to overcome with the camera.

Anyway, hope you like them ....

Man that really looks great! I bet everything will start to grow more now with more light. Are you going to become a SPS freak??

Nice work.

That is very awesome. Not sure about the camera as I don't have that brand but try and turn down the white balance.

Awsome tank and pics! Was your frogspawn always that pillowey, or did it get like that after you added the MH?

It's always been that 'fluffy' but the MH has really brought out it's color!

Cal - dead on about the white balance. That is exactly what the problem was. Still experimenting but getting closer. Thanks...

Are those pendants on seperate ballasts or on a dual ballast?

They are on a dual ballast. I bought them with two individual ballasts but one of the ballasts was DOA , so I bought a dual PFO unit from Premium Aquatics.

That is just FLip'n Nice!!!!!! GOOD JOB!!

Did you need to do any re-wiring to hook the pendants to the PFO ballast? Like having to splice the pendant cables or anything?

Awesome setup!!! That looks great. Cant wait till mine come in. I'm again jelous hehe.

Originally posted by J-Bass

Did you need to do any re-wiring to hook the pendants to the PFO ballast? Like having to splice the pendant cables or anything?

Yes, you hit it on the head. I had to splice the pendant cables with new PFO cables so it would plug into the new dual ballast.

HTH!

Does yoru camera have a manual White Balance, if not try using a auto setting for an outdoor scene? , some things you can try is also turning your exposure down, or shutter speed if you have control over that. I always set my White balance to the sand, but my camera has a white balance meter. Also depending on what bulbs u are running they will get brighter as they burn in.. I am running 250German 10 K ushios and they got super bright white...good luck..great tank

Thanks 3twenty. Great info and I know enough about the settings to start working on the camera.

jd, you might also want to look into the horizontal pendant fixtures, I know the vertical ones like you have look nice but the horizontal will give you better spread over your tank as well as the horizontal mounting needed for some bulbs to burn at the correct temperature.

wow, looks very nice!

i might have missed it, but whats the Kelvin on those bulbs?

20k's and they are gorgeous! I love the blue and allows me to run without actinics.

Cal, I contemplated the horizontals but had to factor in aestetics(sp) for the wife's sake. Actually, two over the 20 is about as perfect as it can get as far as I can tell. Not a dead spot in the tank and allows me to keep anything (finally). I think I have identified SPS and clams so getting close to pulling the trigger on new stuff now that the halides are installed .

nice, what brand of the 20.000K are they? I'm assuming they are meant to be used vertically?

Pretty sure they are XM's correct? Anywho lmk how they do for you as I have ushio and haven't switched over to 20k since the growth might slow down, and I already have actinic supplementation and such, they should also whiten a bit more for you over time from what I've seen from others. I do like the color of 20k though.

cal, i've got an ushio 10,000k, and 2x55w actinics, and I've thought i wasnt quite blue enough.....i wonder what i'd be like if i got a 20,000k, but 6,700Kor so PCs?

cmoreash same here, I actually added vho to the tank and like the look now very much, its a crisp white/hint of blue with corals fluorescing like crazy, but of course this is in a 40g.