Switching from MH to T5?

[spreerider]

how many watts is a 8 tube tek in total, compared to your 500W now?
thats how much power it uses doesnt matter that its MH, incandescent or T5.
432 is a 8 bulb tek if i remember correctly, so thats not much savings in electrical energy, probably wont pay for the upgrade costs for at least a number of years.
But i would go with what you want your tank to look like, i personaly love the shimmer for MH and would never go with anything else, I also like that there are darker parts to put lower light coral in to give more contrast in my tank. But it sounds like you want even consistant lighting, so go with the tek its your money spend it how you want

[fishytime]

Have you considered putting a couple fans in the canopy?

[MikeP]

Yeah I thought about that. I'm more interested in even light distribution and if I used a 6 bulb 54 watt T5 setup it might be worth it on power savings but maybe 6 bulbs wouldn't be enough.

Originally Posted by fishytime

Have you considered putting a couple fans in the canopy?

[i have crabs]

i read a study somewhere and when they tested different mh lights and ballasts most used huge ammounts of energy when starting up and while running,electronic ballasts ran at proper levels but i dont think the starting up was any better,im thinking of buying a kill-a-watt so i can test things myself and know for shure instead of just guessing all the time.
i have no proof myself but i would shure assume any mh light system is gonna use a heck of alot more power than a t5 of similar wattage

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Originally Posted by MikeP

Yeah I thought about that. I'm more interested in even light distribution and if I used a 6 bulb 54 watt T5 setup it might be worth it on power savings but maybe 6 bulbs wouldn't be enough.

Mike, how wide is your tank? Could you get an 8-bulb unit?

[i have crabs]

i say add a 3rd 250w with some t5s aninics or fji purples if thier is room.
if i had a 24" tall tank or shorter i think id keep the t5's i bought but im not satisfied with what i see from my corals, it would be good if someone had a lux meter and a par meter so we could test a bunch of set ups and actually have some numbers to judge things from instead of the same old argument.
i know i have other things to spend $500 on right now though,

heres a lilttle read about par even though its just about mh's

[MikeP]

The tank is 24 in wide. I've thought about adding a third pendent in the middle. It would be nice to get rid of those super hot ballasts in my stand rather than add another one though. Maybe I should save up and buy a MH T5 combo unit. I'm due to buy new bulbs for my current set up and I need a new capacitor for one of the ballasts so I figured if I was going to make the change now is the time.

[spreerider]

i read a study somewhere and when they tested different mh lights and ballasts most used huge ammounts of energy when starting up and while running,electronic ballasts ran at proper levels but i dont think the starting up was any better,im thinking of buying a kill-a-watt so i can test things myself and know for shure instead of just guessing all the time.
i have no proof myself but i would shure assume any mh light system is gonna use a heck of alot more power than a t5 of similar wattage

watts is a measure of power so there is no way 100w of mh could be more than 100w of T5... 100w is 100w of power, and yes there is a surge of power when a coil and core ballast is first turned on but its only for a very short time and wont increase your overall power consumption noticibly as it only lasts a fraction of a second.
a kilo watt meter wont show you a startup spike a sits too fast to see, you can make your own wattmeter with 2 multi meters by attaching a ammeter in series with the ballast and a voltmeter in parallel then multiply the values together gives you watts
Amps X Volts = Watts.