A continuation of the reef aquarium lighting experiment detailed in the last thread:

Note in the picture that the appearance of the light output ranges from the red/violet hue of the FLORA SUN (far left) to the deep blue actinic of the CORAL SUN lamp(far right). In the middle, it is apparent that not all ‘white’ bulbs are the same. Take a look at the difference between the stark white ULTRA SUN lamp (left middle) compared with the bluish/white OCEAN SUN lamp (right middle).
The light fixture over the display tank is four feet long and runs 4×46 inch T-5 High Output (HO) lamps. The lamps are wired in pairs with each pair connected to an independent switch.
The four lamps, connected in pairs, created six possible combinations.
Pair combinations for the Reef Aquarium Lighting Experiment
Lamp 1 |
Lamp 2 |
|
Set-up 1 |
CORAL SUN | ULTRA SUN |
Set-up 2 |
FLORA SUN | OCEAN SUN |
Set-up 3 |
OCEAN SUN | CORAL SUN |
Set-up 4 |
ULTRA SUN | FLORA SUN |
Set-up 5 |
FLORA SUN | CORAL SUN |
Set-up 6 |
OCEAN SUN |
ULTRA SUN |
The lamp combinations were toggled back and forth leveraging the two independent switches in the following fashion:


The lamps in the first and third positions were wired together as the first combination and the lamps in the second and fourth positions were wired together as the second combination. The appearance of the tank was judged qualitatively according to relative warmth of the light and a general color and appearance description. Photographs were taken of the reef tank with the various color combinations to capture the possible differences
More pictures and results to come…
Check out the next post in this series to view the reef aquarium color temperature experiment results
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