What type of light makes red discus look best

[Russ]

Hi,
I have 2 X 75 gal. tanks one with blue discus and one with red fish, in both tanks I have a 3' power compact light and a regular 3' florescent strip lighting them. In the tank with blue discus I put an acintic bulb in the 3' flourescent strip and the fish look amazing. Now in the tank with the red fish I would like to add a bulb to the flourescent strip that would accent the red in those fish. Does anyone know the best type of bulb to use?

Thank You-
Russ

[Sameen]

A combination of 1 red tube and 1 pink tube and 1 blue(actinic marine) tube is what i use... red melon, cover or turq also look awesome in LED.

[Ed13]

There is quite a few options. Just look at the spectral graph for the bulb, usually available on the box or online, and pick bulbs that peak in the red area but remain low in the blue. Blue light just drowns reds too much and while it's impossible to not have any blue, just avoid large quantities. Most bulbs that glow a reddish/pinkish tone would be fine, even a cheap warm white bulb from the hardware store might do the trick. Just don't replace all the bulbs with red/pink ones it'll look too dark, keep one white bulb in there

For examples of pink/red bulbs, GE's 9,325K bulb is the best red bulb I've seen at least as a PC bulb, Colormax bulbs from Coralife were pretty good too.
For NO Flourescents there are a few, your LFS most likely will have Hagen Power Glo or Colormax from Coralife.

[Russ]

Thank you, I found a Coralife nutri grow plant bulb in my closet and it gives off a pink glow which is working nicely. Thanks again.

-Russ

[matt2426]

colormax really makes the discus colors pop red fish look really good under colormax bulbs