Is My Light Supposed To Be Like This?

So I went to the LFS today and got a Aqueon Floramax plant bulb for my tank, they only had one so I moved my plants to the side with the plant bulb, so my question is this...Why is my plant bulb darker than my original bulb? It almost looks purple? Is it bc it is a UV bulb or something? Should I go back to my original?
Notice the difference?

The picture does hardly any justice to the darkness, it's almost like midnight. Is it supposed to be like this?

33 views and not one answer??? Did I ask something stupid?

think you need to upload your picture with photobucket or something similar for pepole to see your picture

Okay, that's weird. I couldn't see your photograph until I hit the reply button and scrolled down!

Anyway, I'm not a lighting expert but I think bulbs that are aimed specifically at growing plants tend to peak in the blue and red parts of the visible spectrum, hence they can lean towards a purplish/pinkish tinge. This may be why it appears duller to you because you have it next to a light peaking in different parts of the spectrum that to the human eye appear brighter.

So, assuming that you have the correct wattage light for your fitting, what you have is "right", but you may not like the appearance of it, either because it is in juxtaposition with a very different light (so getting a matching one could make it look a lot better), or because it simply isn't a pleasing effect for you.

I've had my own decisions to make about lighting because I hated the Juwel "warm" light supplied with my tank - it made my lovely green plants look horribly yellow - so I replaced it with a daylight lamp and am now happy with it. I've also had bulbs that were just too pink, too blue, whatever - yeah, I'm fussy - but at the end of the day, you want something you enjoy looking at or there isn't much point (or not for me, anyway!).

I hope that helped a bit.

Ok so IDK why it won't let me upload pix from this site anymore so I opened a photobucket acct. Here is the picture of my lighting, it's nice and it gives my fish really nice coloring, and it seems to have cleared up the cloudiness in my tank, go figure right? I only bought the one light bc it was the last one and my plants seemed like they wanted to die, now that I have the light they seem to be doing much better! And my fish seem to like it too.

What is the k rating on the bulb? Most "daylight" bulbs run at 10,000k. The rating determines the color spectrum. Lower ratings like 6500k are yellowish/red side and the higher ratings are more blue/white.

Some plants, depending on their natural environments benefit more from specific spectrums of light.