[karnivor]

Ive always struggled to get some decent Actinic shots of my corals. This is made worse by the fact that I use pure actinic lighting (by way of blue filters) to ignite my Corals. This leaves me with no other available light for the camera to lock on to.

I had a few minutes to spare late last light and the family were all in bed and all the lights were out except my Actinics. I decided to have a go with my handheld underwater compact camera, to see what I could get.

Bear in mind that these shots were taken with extremely low and confusing light, hand held and with polyps flowing about in the current.

Some digital post filtering has been applied, to remove some of the Actinic light and to give a more accurate representation of what my eyes see.

Here goes.

[lindsay]

Yeah very nice,when you have a go again try it with the flow off,different word at night

[dave14]

Nice pics Tony, sure do glow well

[karnivor]

Quigs, on Sep 28 2009, 06:10 PM, said:

How long do you leave the pure actinic on for?

They come on at 9am and go off at 1.30 am.
Main lights are on at 12.30 pm till 10.30 pm

The actinics are Geismann's but ive got blue sleeves over them to filter out the yellow produced by the mercury. Its far more dramatic and allows the fish to sleep and the night workers to come out.

[karnivor]

Quigs, on Sep 28 2009, 07:58 PM, said:

So you don't use the 'normal' actinics as part of your lighting regime?

No, not at all. Other than the Actinic output, the tubes only add a small amount of yellow to the mix anyway, which represents almost nothing in comparison to the twin 400's.

TBH I find T5 actinics to be rather washed out, which I think is due to the lower surface area available for the actinic coating. If you want to see some good actinics, you should take a step back in time and look at the philips 03 T12's. Far better than these modern jobbies. They are still available too.

[Desmo Pete]

Looking Sweet!