Red Sea Max 250 replacement lighting

The Red Sea Max 250 out of the box T5 fluorescent lighting has been great for all coral growth so far. I wasn’t impressed with the color of my corals though as corals require different wavelengths of light to fluoresce in different colors.

Since T5 bulbs for a reef tank should be changed every 9-12 months, I decided to not use Red Sea’s bulbs but experiment with a wider spectrum of light. I replaced the manufacturer’s bulbs with ATI T5 39 watt fluorescent bulbs and couldn’t have been happier. The corals look great and grow well. If you are going to replace your Red Sea Max 250 lights, please consider the below recommendation and arrangement (really) as I did much research to arrive at this layout and it works well.

Note: replace one bulb every three days or even a week as replacing all of the bulbs at the same time will result in such an increase in light intensity that your corals will turn white or bleach.

Below is a photo of the new ATI T5 fluorescent bulbs from Front to Back of Red Sea Max 250 light hood.

New T5 lighting for the Red Sea Max 250

Front

39W Blue Plus T5 HO Fluorescent

39W Purple Plus T5 HO Fluorescent

39W Aquablue Special T5 HO Fluorescent

39W Blue Plus T5 HO Fluorescent

39W Aquablue Special T5 HO Fluorescent

39W Blue Plus T5 HO Fluorescent

Back

I buy these bulbs at a great price from Amazon. Here is a link to all the bulbs you need on Amazon.

The light spectrum of each type of ATI T5 fluorescent is shown graphically below and what you should notice is the wide spectrum coverage.

39W Blue Plus T5 HO Fluorescent

39W Purple Plus T5 HO Fluorescent

39W Aquablue Special T5 HO Fluorescent

Have you tried other bulb combinations that work as well or better? Let me know in the comments below.