T5 Lighting

[daddy01]

Hi,
Interesting thread..I have a chance to obtain 36" T5 housing and was curious bout t5's myself . So if you get T5 housing with individual relfectors and good quality bulbs they are as efficient as Halide? or am I misunderstanding something?
My tank is 36"X18"X18" and am running Coralife 36" 2X96W bulbs the T5 fixture would be better?
Jim

[BCOrchidGuy]

I went to visit a reefer in Surrey a few years ago, he had the most amazing tanks, SPS and all and it was beautiful. He kept it all with NO tubes, yep, home depot stuff plus some actinics. Now the thing is, his corals probably grew slower but it did grow. If I remember right, his Acros were close to the top.

Yes I agree with everyone else you can keep sps under T5, spend the money on a good fixture though, I used cheap fixtures and they ended up wet on the inside and only lasting about 6 months. They had open eneds etc... Someone said individual refelctors, I think it's a great idea. When my tank was new I had a 400 watt SE bulb over it (for a few days) but when I went to a good reflector and 250 watt DE HQI I beleive I noticed a big difference, the 250 was brighter, granted there was a different reflector, electronic ballast vs mag ballast and the new one being HQI it may be like comparing a kia to a maserati, I guess what I'm trying to say is, the more you try to improve the overall quality the better, not just the tubes themselves.

Douglas

[Stones]

Originally Posted by daddy01

Hi,
Interesting thread..I have a chance to obtain 36" T5 housing and was curious bout t5's myself . So if you get T5 housing with individual relfectors and good quality bulbs they are as efficient as Halide? or am I misunderstanding something?
My tank is 36"X18"X18" and am running Coralife 36" 2X96W bulbs the T5 fixture would be better?
Jim

Basically what it comes down to is whether or not T5s would be best suited to your aquarium system. There are many threads on RC with actual data comparing metal halide setups to T5 setups and most of the time PAR readings are fairly similar with metal halides typically producing slightly more PAR than T5s. Depending on the bulbs, ballasts, and reflectors used, either metal halide or T5s can produce more PAR so it really depends on the equipment used as well. With T5s, you do have a more customizable light spectrum though as there are many different bulbs you can choose from.

I'm sure that you would be more than happy after making the switch from PC to T5's. Just make sure the T5s are High Output (HO) and not normal output (NO). As you said, individual reflectors as well as high quality bulbs such as aquascience, ATI, KZ, giesmann, etc will make a huge difference in performance.

[RuGlu6]

I go tT5 Tek 6 lamps fixture SPS color and growth is good
i got pink and green SPS growing.
The key thing is the reflectors though.