lighting behaviour of reefers

[Rikko]

Tank: 65AGA. 36Lx18DX24H

Lights are on a timer from 9am-11pm. The dawn and dusk effects are *cough* achieved by having the lights on the FW tank below it come on a little bit earlier and shutting off a little bit later which bathes the room in light.

Lights: 2xHO T5 (39W) 6400K 2xNO T5 (21W?) 20000K. Upper refugium/surge tank is lit by a Coralife mini Aqualight with 2x9W PCs.

Powered with a Workhorse 7 ballast mounted on the back of the canopy (with a large sheet of aluminum flashing sandwiched there to allow for heat dissipation)

Each bulb has a SLS clip-on parabolic reflector I got from Reefgeek.


I'm thrilled by it. The first T5s I saw kind of snagged me and I've been a fan ever since. The tank colour is excellent and it's very bright. There are mild shimmer lines that the halide folks so love, but not so much as to get annoying (I find halide shimmer makes me nauseus). Corals thus far are doing exceptionally well (mostly LPS with one unidentified SPS and some shrooms), but I hesitate to say they're thriving until I've had them at least a year and have seen definite growth.