Actinic bulb in freshwater planted?

[justahannah]

That I don't know. I know people with marine tanks and actinic lighting also battle algae issues so it may increase your algae growth...but I don't know if saltwater algae utilizes light differently from freshwater algae. I didn't notice algae issues while I had the partial actinic lighting...but my lighting has stayed at 2.1 WPG regardless of spectrum. If you increase your WPG, even if the increase is w/actinic lighting, I would think algae would find a way to utilize this unless your plants are outcompeting the algae for the other tank nutrients. I'm hoping someone with more experience with actinic will chime in here for you.

 

[WaterBug]

I have 2 65 watt daylight bulbs and 2 65 watt actinic bulbs over my 75g planted. The actinics do not seem to contribute to my wattage totals but neither have i seen any major algae outbreaks. It does not seem to do any harm as far as I have seen (they have been in for about a year..and will continue to be there till I can afford new bulbs.)

 

[phanmc]

Played around with an Apogee PAR meter and the results are surprising. I tested Current's 27w dual daylight and actinic bulbs in a 12g Aquapod and the results in PAR were pretty close, within 10%. Maybe the reason why people think using actinics causes algae is because they have too much light and didn't factor in how much the actinic bulb is actually contributing.

Since one of my lights have gone out and I don't have a replacement yet, I'll see what kind of impact using an actinic in place of one of the dual daylights will have. Mixing the two does look kind of nice.

 

[Spewn]

Maybe the reason why people think using actinics causes algae is because they have too much light and didn't factor in how much the actinic bulb is actually contributing.

I'd bet that's it, considering most of the time this comes up the suggestion is to treat the actinic bulbs as only 50% of their wattage.