# Colormax bulbs..



## chase127 (Jun 8, 2008)

What really are colormax bulbs? what K rating are they? are they better for plants than a 6500K bulb? the pink is really lame...


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## chase127 (Jun 8, 2008)

i found these charts.. 



















where the heck does that put the purple pink of a colormax bulb? under 1800K? 
or is it a combo of blue and red?


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## Stevie D (Jul 16, 2008)

Why is the pink really lame??? It really brings out the reds in the plants and the fish quite nicely. I have heard that similar bulbs are 9325K or something similar to that, but it seems that about half that is the correct "color" spectrum for that "color". I don't really know, but i have the plant gro bulbs here and they make such a nice difference. 

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=3578+3733+13821+13827&pcatid=13827

Ofcourse i mix them. 67K with the plant gro, and then 2 10K for a noon burst. But i might get another type of "pink" bulb and replace one of the 10k's.

WHen just the 10ks are on, it is too "clean", or too green i should say.

Stevie D


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## chase127 (Jun 8, 2008)

well i have a colormax bulb as my only bulb. so everything is pink, it doesnt look very attractive lol.


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## ZooTycoonMaster (Jan 2, 2008)

Here's the colormax spectrum chart from Current:









It doesn't give an exact Kelvin rating, but it's farther up in the nanometer range than actinic.


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## KevinC (May 24, 2004)

For specialty bulbs like the Colormax, the Kelvin rating scale is really a bad representation.

The Kelvin scale is based on blackbody radiation - heating something up until it glows - like an incandescent filament or a piece of steel . . .

Since all fluorescent bulbs are based on fluorescence (a substance absorbing one color and giving off another), not heating, the use of the K scale is poorly justified.

IF a fluorescent bulb has a broad emission, then it loosely corresponds well with a K rating (low K = yellow, high K = blue). IF the bulb is peaked heavily in certain areas (like the photosynthetic ranges), then the K rating does a poor job of representing the bulb.


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## Left C (Nov 15, 2003)

jake, at PlantGeek.net, contacted Coralife when the 6700K/Colormax PC's came out. The person at Coralife told him the the Colormax bulbs don't grow plants as well as their 6700K bulbs.

Here are the color spectrums.

6700K









Colormax









GE 9325K


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## Walking_Target (Jul 16, 2008)

Well, if the PAR scale is to be believed, plants will photosynthesize between around 300nm and 700nm, supposedly this range has a few ideal peaks, but i have no clue where those might be. 

I digress though. 

It seems that many people here are confusing the visible color of the bulb with its output frequencies. The human eye is an interesting thing, we tend to see the visible spectrum in an interesting way. I can't remember who explained it on here, but i remember reading that the human eye tends to average out what we see in a light spectrum. So, if I understand that correctly, we would see the bulk of a spectrum rather than the blue and green spikes that are on very narrow frequencies. 

Either way, I do know that my 6700k tubes tend to make everything look very crisp and clean, so do 10000k tubes, but the Colormax does indeed bring out some of the more subtle colors and makes it look nice.


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## Church (Sep 14, 2004)

I'm pretty sure that the sole purpose of this bulb is to make colors pop out to the eye of humans. That is all. While I don't think they are BAD for plants (obviously), I don't think they are desirable for plants. They just simply make things colorful. I'm pretty sure that's why it's called the "Colormax" instead of the "Growthmax."


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