Anyone still rocking 6500k Iwasakis?

[Skibum]

Best growth and colors I've ever had was under 6500K Iwasakis back in the day!!
You need to use some blue T5s to supplement, cause it will be yellow like in a tide pool.
My tank looked just like when we for for a snorkeling ... very natural.
I'm using Radium 20Ks now and love it! Halides are halides. They will always give you what you need.

I was thinking of picking up a spectra, then some luxcore switchable ballasts. I was going to go with 6500K Iwasakis, then ATI Actinics 4x, then some LED blue lightstrips as well for dawn to dusk effect as the t5s aren't dimmable on that fixture. I'm thinking that's a winning combo ;-).

 

[A. grandis]

I was thinking of picking up a spectra, then some luxcore switchable ballasts. I was going to go with 6500K Iwasakis, then ATI Actinics 4x, then some LED blue lightstrips as well for dawn to dusk effect as the t5s aren't dimmable on that fixture. I'm thinking that's a winning combo ;-).

Spectra is a great fixture with an amazing look and great light distribution. The single reflector on both sides for the double T5s mix the spectrum well and gives a great supplementation to the halides. Great advantage with the flexibility of running the T5s on a longer photoperiod and the halides for 5-6 hours or so, if you need to. With SPS, you can run the halides for longer thought.
You can run 2 ATI True Actinics and 2 ATI Blue Plus.
If you run 4 ATI True actinics you won't see much blue to compensate the spectrum visually, but you will get the curves for the corals, which is important.
The Blue Plus will give you amazing PAR while the True actinic will give you much less PAR!!!
Halides will give you all you need including PAR and UV!
Dimmable feature isn't important at all! That is the only thing that I don't really follow when trying to resemble the natural environment. Corals and fishes really don't care about that!
I had a dimmable ATI and sold to get a regular Sunpower.
Ambient light is enough to help fish in that sense.
I personally don't like the blue from LEDs.