Frag tank lights...do I need actinic as well?

I do not believe actinics are necessary for a frag tank but would not hurt if you ever want to see the other colors of the coral. Are you set on running a MH? If not I would look into a 6 bulb T5 configuration to get the best of both worlds. Then you can optimize a few bulbs for growth and then have a few for color. It has been proven quite a bit that T5's can grow pretty much any coral. In talking to the guy at Midwest Saltwater all of his frag tanks were T5 setups.

 

Antinic & high temp colors are for our viewing pleasure only, it does nothing for the corals.

If you want the fastest growth buy the hottest bulb you can. 6500K if you can find it.

 

I'd use the 6500k to get the growth, then switch to a higher K like 20,000k to bring out the colors in the corals.

 

x2 This will ensure that if/when you go to trade/sell your frags they are colored up nicely, the low kelvin bulb will get you great growth but youll be sacrificing optimum colors.

 

In a couple months I was going to build a sump with a frag tank incorporated in somewhere. I wanted to try out some LED's, it would be cool to look into. I think it would make a great frag tank light. Here's the site I found on a thread talking about it on RC:

http://www.rapidled.com/servlet/StoreFront