T5 lighting for SPS?

i have crabs · #1 02-12-2009, 12:25 PM

im using a 8 bulb tek light and i grow sps with no problems in a 28" deep tank, with my par meter i estimate it to be about the same a 250w halides in strength

i have crabs · #2 02-12-2009, 12:26 PM

the numbers in the pic are par readings when i changed bulbs in dec.

digital-audiophile · #3 02-12-2009, 12:34 PM

T5's are great. A perfect option to MH.

If anyone tells you that you cannot grow SPS under T5's I would suggest they have never tried it themself.

rzadun · #4 02-12-2009, 01:11 PM

I am using a current USA fixture that has twelve HO tubes 3feet each over my 240 gallon tank. It is 30 inches deep and I do not think the light at the bottom is sufficient for SPS. At the top is very brite.

Trigger Man · #5 02-12-2009, 04:10 PM

I'm using the tek t5 unit with 4 bulb 4 foot unit in my 5 foot 24 inch deep tank and all my sps is growing. I do put my most light intense sps 15 inches or closer to the top (highest sps is 8 inches from the light), but I've got stags, birdsnest, and monties near the bottom with no issues (I did recently add a 2 bulb 36 inch glo unit to the back of the tank, but that was for some supplimentry lighting as the tek unit sits closer to the front of the tank then in the usual middle)

rstar · #6 02-12-2009, 04:43 PM

I believe Stones is using a sfiligoi t5 unit on his 90 and it is an sps dominated tank, beautiful corals, i believe he has a picture thread going on here somewhere.

randallino · #7 02-12-2009, 06:16 PM

Thanks rstar
For the heads up about Stones he does have a nice setup.

Rbacchiega
"Are you looking at using it over your 90?"

Yes the problem I'm having is that I have a Euro braced tank (Black in colour) so an 8 bulb fixture maybe somewhat of a waste because of the opening on the top is only 12" wide.
Would a 6 bulb 54 watt provide enough light for sps from the top 1/2 of the tank?

Stones · #8 02-12-2009, 06:20 PM

Thanks for the compliments Ryan. Here is a pic of my tank from a few weeks back. Forgive my photography skills as I can't seem to get the white balance set correctly for the life of me.

I'm using the Sfiligoi Stealth 8 x 54 watt fixture and the only corals which I keep are SPS. I thought that after switching from 2 x 250 Watt metal halide that I would have to shuffle some corals around to move them higher in the tank but that has not been the case. I can keep acros on the sandbed with no ill effects. My corals are also starting to colour up much faster than when I was using metal halides. I recently moved this reef in September of 2008 and after which almost all of my acros browned out on me. I was using the halide setup until December of this year with near zero improvement in colouration. As soon as I switched to the T5 fixture, I noticed colours were coming back in less than a weeks time. The colours still aren't anywhere near what they were before I moved but at least im making some progress now with the new fixture.

I don't have the links handy but I've read through a thread on RC where 8 x 54 watt T5's (in a TEK fixture) were compared to 2 x 250 metal halides and the T5s actually came out on top for par readings, even though they used less watts. T5's also produced more even par readings throughout the tank whereas the par readings with the metal halide varied considerably due to shadowing of the point source.

I would definately recommend T5's to anyone thinking about making the switch or just getting into keeping SPS. With that said, I would not recommend T5's for all setups. Tanks over 30" deep or cube type tanks would be situations where using metal halide setups would work much better than T5's.