t5 vs pc

[Don E]

Hi- sorry if this is a common question- the forum won't let me search using the terms "T5" or "PC" grrr.

Anyway- I'm looking to light a 20g tall. I used to use a coralife 2x65 pc unit, and was happy with it- but people tell me t5's are cheaper and cooler.

What I'm confused about is the equivalent wattage. What kind of t5 setup would I need to approximate the lighting I used to get with the 2x65 PC unit?

Thanks, all

don
(back in Victoria again)

[kwirky]

if your tank is tall, I'd go with the PC's or MH lighting.

Remember, T5's are normally driven and designed to light plants. Their efficiency is owed to their small size allowing them to be reflected optimaly. They still lose about 50% of their light after 12" of water depth.

PC's loose their light at about 16" or so.

Mh's on the other hand are point light. 150/175 MH loses 50% of it's light at about 20" away from the point. 250 at about 24" or so, and 400w at about 30"

so comparing watt for watt is hard when you have tank depth involved.

[Don E]

Thanks for the reply- that's interesting. Hmm. Mind you, a 20 Tall is still not all that tall- 16 inches, I think?

I may just go back to the 2x 65.

Is anybody out there using t5's with a 20T? If so, how many, what length, and are you happy with them?

thanks

d

[StirCrazy]

I would stay with your PC's The difference between PC's and HOT5's is hardly worth looking at.. and normal T5's are not as powerfull.

Steve

[Dale]

Hi Don.

I don't have a firm opinion either way but my 75G. tank is lit by T-5's and doing well. I guess it depends on what you plan to stock.
One thing I did do was to build a rockwall using a light diffuser background for support. This allowed me to raise the rocks up and to put my highest light demanding corals on top. Both my hammer and candycanes are doing well anyways (I don't have "high" light corals). The top of the rock ridge is about 6" from the bulbs.
I have two units with 2 bulbs each:
10,000K
6700K
Actinic
Colourmax (came with the unit-when it's time I'll replace with 10,000 or 6,700)

Here's the T-5's in the canopy

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/fishherder/100_1481.jpg

and the tank from a little while ago

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d190/fishherder/100_1496.jpg
________
growing marijuana (http://growingmedicalmarijuana.org)

[albert_dao]

HO T5's are vastly superior to PC bulbs and can, if done properly, exceed MH's in PAR output.

Look at Iwan's tank on RC and any doubts you have should dissapate.

Here's some further reading:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=878433

[Reefer Rob]

PCs do not compare at all to T5s with the right reflector. I run 324 watts of T5 over my 72 Gal bow, and all my sps is doing great. Big difference from the 260 watts of PCs I had before (didn't have SPS then). 2 or 3 times the light and way less heat.

Rob

[StirCrazy]

Ok you guys are getting confused.. take reflectors out of the question as that is not what were talking about... a proper reflector on a 150 watt DE MHwill make it seam like it puts out more light than a 400 wat SE MH.

compare aples to aples.. a PC is actualy a T4 which is nothing more than the tube size.. oh and by the way the smaller the tube size the more intence the light is for the same given wattage.

now a 96 watt PC is a 6 foot T4 folded in half so it is 3 foot long. Because of the fold there is a little light loss in the area where the tubes block each other but downwards there should be the same light out put.

I know where there are some T5's running.. maybeI will have to take my tester down there and get some hard numbers on this. the question is how do we compare them? do we do wattages or by lenght?

watages is a little un fair as it doesn't give and acurate measurment of coverage, so I am thinking by lenght.


Steve

[Reefer Rob]

The best testers are corals themselves :wink: All the theory and testing aside, the bottom line is they work well. Some of the nicest captive reefs in the world are being kept under T5 lighting. If you know of an SPS tank being kept under PC lighting I would like to see it, so far I have not been able to find one. Before I switched to T5s I did a lot of looking around, and could find very few people who acually used them who didn't like them.

Rob

[TheReefGeek]

take reflectors out of the question
Why would you not consider the reflectors? One of the big advantages of T5 is that they are small and can be reflected really well with individual reflectors. In practice we all use reflectors, so they are very important when considering light setup.

I would choose HO T5's with icecap reflectors over PC with any reflector.

As mentioned SPS can be kept under HO T5s, but not under PC, so no matter what theoretical testing is done, in practice (which is what counts for me) HO T5s outperform PC.

You have to make sure you are getting actual HO (High Output) T5s, not just normal ones.

The T5s are going to be more expensive to buy good reflectors, but it will be worth it if you want to keep higher light requiring animals.

[Reefer Rob]

Don
To answer your question, 2 T5 tubes that will fit the length of you tank would probably match the light that you have, but I think you would be happier with 4. You will need to acclimatize your tank using window screens, and you will go through a new tank syndrom, but in the end you will be happy with the results.

some things that happened when I switch from PC to T5:

brown and rust colored zoo changed to grey centre with orange fringe
brown zoo with slight blue tint that was not doing well is now recovering and spredding, and is blue with green fringe
one ricordia faded quite a bit, but recovered to way better colors that before
I lost a couple of heads from my blastomussa, but the rest are holding
my branching hammer looks like it wants to take over the world :mrgreen:
the top 2" of coraline on back wall cooked (back wall is all clean now- looks better)

I still smarts that I paid a lot of money for a Coralife 2 X 65 fixture that is a peice of crap IMO, and gave me brown corals. All the LFS are now carrying T5 fixtures that cost not much more than PC fixtures. IMO PC lighting is not a viable light souce for growing colorful corals.

Rob

[muck]

Got any pics of your tank and corals Rob?

[TheReefGeek]

You should also spend some time researching which color combination of bulbs you want.

Rob maybe you have some ideas here, what are you running for color temperatures?

[Reefer Rob]

I'll try to take a few and post this week.

Rob

[Reefer Rob]

I run 4 aquablue and 2 blueplus. I tried 50/50 aquablue/blueplus, as many others do, but found it too blue for my taste- it's all a matter of personal preference.

Rob

[midgetwaiter]

I'm using 2 Coralife dual T5 strips (2x14w normal output) on my 20 gal and 1 strip on my 13 gal (15" high). I started with them on my old 15 because I got a really good deal on them and after upgrading the tank I'm sticking with them anyway because I'm pretty happy with them.

There is something with T5s that leads to greater intensity than you get out of PCs or thicker fluorescent tubes. I've had more than one reefer actually look at my tank and then turn to me and say, "T5s? really?" I think they they just do a good job of emitting light over the entire length of the tube, something you don't get out of regular NO or VHO tubes. Whatever it is it works.

I don't keep anything that requires really high light levels but have been successful with softies, xenids, zoas, mushrooms frogspawn, open brains and ricordias. Nothing you couldn't keep with PCs too but IMO the T5s do it better. My pink zoas which are real light lovers are going crazy.

One of the drawbacks I've found are that the lamp intensity seems to be really high for the first hundred hours or so. It's normal to see a sharp decline in output during this time but in seems to be a big change with these fixtures. I bleached a BTA and a ricordia with a new fixture a while ago. Be careful changing lamps. The actinic bulbs they come with really suck too, they don't put out much at all. I switched mine with 20000k blue bulbs and am much happier. T5 actinics in general don't have a great rep. Non coral things like macros and coraline don't seem to like these much either.

In your case I'd probably not recommend you bother upgrading with these unless you went for HO T5s with individual reflectors. I don't think you'd see enough of a change over the PCs you have to justify the expense. A Tek fixture with 3 or 4 HOs would be a pretty big improvement though.

[StirCrazy]

. If you know of an SPS tank being kept under PC lighting I would like to see it, so far I have not been able to find one.

Rob

My reef was a PC SPS tank befor I went to MH. I had very good sucess.


No there is a trick you can do which I am playing with or was till I took that tank down and if anyone in town has true HO T5's let me know so I can do a measurment on them (I suspect the local LFS' only have NO T5's) when I was doing was running my PC's at HO levels and there wasa big difference and after 2 years there was still good output.

I have also seen nice sps tanks under VHO and even NO, but what I have not seen is a two year old T5 tank with mature corals over a year old in it. this would be a good indacator of how they do.

Likehave said in previous tests is that the benifit to T5's is that you can cram more under the hood and get even more even lighting than with other types.

Steve

[Reefer Rob]

OK, as requested, here are a few shots of my tank.

Here is a full shot; I need a lot more corals
http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/Aquarium_Full.JPG

This is the lights; front hinges for feeding, whole top hinges for maintenance.
http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/Lights.JPG

Two weeks ago
http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/Acro_1_Before.JPG

Today
http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/Acro_1_now.JPG

Two weeks in my tank

http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/Acro_3_now.JPG

Seriatopora
http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/seriatopora_July%2018%202006.JPG

Pocillopoa frag 2 months ago; just starting to take off now, see picture with blue acro.
http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/pocillopora_before%20T5.jpg

Hairy shrooms; used to be mostly brown
http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/Hairy_mushrooms.JPG

Happy hammer
http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/Hammer.JPG

Ricordia
http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/Ricordia.JPG

Zoos; were rust colored before
http://www.excalibur.bc.ca/aquarium/Zoos.JPG

[Reefer Rob]

Steve, you need to see this. Changed my life :D
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=700454&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

Rob

[muck]

Bam!!

[albert_dao]

... I *cough* am going to get a shot at trying out some Tek5 units by the end of this week - WITH ATI BULBS!

W00T!!11!

[albert_dao]

Bam!!

MAD SPAM ALERT!

POST PADDING PENALTY SHOULD BE CONSIDERED - INTO THE CAGE YOU GO RYAN.

[Don E]

Wow, very interesting posts- thanks, everyone.

I am starting again from scratch so I may go with the dual T5 setup. (I gave away my 20T when I left Calgary- lock stock and barrel. Gave it to a woman who is doing a great job with it and she's hooked now.)

Someday, I'd like a bigger setup... but then again I'd like to stop moving every two years, too...

thanks again

don

[StirCrazy]

Steve, you need to see this. Changed my life :D
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=700454&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

Rob

I did see that, when he posted it.. and I have never seen some one spend so much time with photo shop in my life. Made me chuckle

Steve

[Reefer Rob]

You're a hard guy to please Steve :neutral: How 'bout this one:
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-03/totm/index.php

[StirCrazy]

If you know of an SPS tank being kept under PC lighting I would like to see it,

Rob

here are some pics of mine from the PC/VHO days

http://www.members.shaw.ca/stircrazy/tank_left10.jpg

http://www.members.shaw.ca/stircrazy/tank_right26.jpg

http://www.members.shaw.ca/stircrazy/top/blue_purple_green_mili.jpg

http://www.members.shaw.ca/stircrazy/top/several.jpg

So now the kicker, lights are only part of the system, and the brighter they are the easier it is to get color and growth but you can get it with out MH it is just a lot harder. So weather you use T5, PC, VHO MH ect.. it just doesn't matter as that is only less than 1/2 the solution, there is also nutrents, alk, Ca, Mg, ect.. temp, salinity and on and on and on.

what I was trying to say in the biggining is that he already has the PC, why throw them away and spen the money he doesn't have to on T5's when he can just add DIY VHO or add a T5 or two to his PC's use the T5's as actinics and get 10000K PC's.. and so on and so on.. I started out with overdriven NO's then moved to PC's with the NO's for actinics, then I moved to PC's with VHO actinics, then to PC's VHO, and a 175 watt MH, then to dual 250 watt HQI with VHO actinics. but on my smaller tank I just took down and that is staying down I had my bubble tip, My brain, a bunch of muchroom and polyp rock for over two years under 24" PC's and 1 VHO actinic, but for my SPS I have found the best combo is the MH that I have now.

Steve

[muck]

MAD SPAM ALERT!

POST PADDING PENALTY SHOULD BE CONSIDERED - INTO THE CAGE YOU GO RYAN.

Ahh... you got me Albert. What are you doing on here...isn't there a karaoke bar open tonight.. :razz:

[albert_dao]

You know, there is! But everyone is poor from Stampede.

Me, I'll be poor from the new TEK5 unit I'm going to get at the end of this week. WIN!

[muck]

Me, I'll be poor from the new TEK5 unit I'm going to get at the end of this week. WIN!

Which one are you going with? I have been thinking about doing this on my tank as well..