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Lighting temperature and coral color
- Thread starter Bryan
- Start date
Like many other things in this hobby, the answer depends upon what you are trying to do.
Generally you'll get a lot more PAR out of a lower color temp bulb, but as you get down to the 6500K range the light will look very yellow, almost what you would expect from an incandescent bulb. Usually you'll get best growth in this range, but it's not that simple. Those real nice looking corals you got might seem to look very brown under this light.
As you go to the higher color temps, the additional blue can really make colors pop, especially the greens and blues. You also might want this sort of light for deep water corals.
Personally I like bulbs for my reef at 10000K, but I wouldn't call anyone wrong if they used anything from 6500K to 20000K.
Generally you'll get a lot more PAR out of a lower color temp bulb, but as you get down to the 6500K range the light will look very yellow, almost what you would expect from an incandescent bulb. Usually you'll get best growth in this range, but it's not that simple. Those real nice looking corals you got might seem to look very brown under this light.
As you go to the higher color temps, the additional blue can really make colors pop, especially the greens and blues. You also might want this sort of light for deep water corals.
Personally I like bulbs for my reef at 10000K, but I wouldn't call anyone wrong if they used anything from 6500K to 20000K.
