Sounds like MH with T5 is taking the lead

Personaly I feel the best bang for your buck is MH lighting with VHO actinics. the T5's I have seen at a couple LFS here have been totaly disapointing.. I guess they would be better than NO bulbs but thats about it.

for pure intensity you can't beet the MH lighting.

as for your question about your 150's they will be fine for a tank less than 18" tall.

Steve

Going on 17yr.s now doing reefs and seen many of my friends. Nothing lights like halides. I run T-5,s over my 75. Nice colour and a decent light, however when I put my 175w halides back on, even with cheaper 14K bulbs, the corals look better.

My friend switched his 180 from halides to multiple T-5,s a year or so ago. The experiment is now over & his 400w halides are back over his tank. His huge leathers & other softies seem to be enjoying the intensity.

I did like vho and agree with Ben,s post on actinic vho bulbs. Good T-5 actinics are pretty close but I still think vho has the edge. Also the above mentioned friend had a previous 120g mixed aquarium before the 180. He lit it with 6-110w vho bulbs. That was one of the nicest looking aquarium I,ve seen. Colours were superb, even with sps.

So I guess I agree with the halide/T-5 combo or halide/vho combo for overall best intensity and colours both the corals & overall tank appearance.

My next best, and better cost wise, would be just halides with a higher colour temp. like the 14K-20K bulbs. And to boot, I like the cheaper bulbs like CV,s or SA bulbs.

T5s for me. They run much cooler, and a more even light throughout the tank. Lighting all the surfaces of the corals, not just the ones facing a single point light source. You can play with different bulb combinations to fine tune your "colour". That shimmer effect with MHs is nice though.

To those that were not impressed with the output of the T5 they've seen, do you know what fixture it was?
I have been following the massive T5 thread on RC... somthing like 150 pages... and the consensus there is that T5ho without good reflectors is about the same as PC, but T5ho with good individual reflectors (like sunlight supply or icecap) is stronger than halide. Infact, there are instructions for how to acclimate your tank when you switch from halide to T5ho so that your corals aren't burnt.
For example, I have been told that the 96w Tek fixture over a 30gal tank might be too intense for some softies, but even a 175w halide wasn't too much light over my 20gal. And a more recent post claims that halide drops off quicker as it gets closer to the bottom???
I know that most of what we read on bulletin boards is just recycled quotes from somewhere else eg, how many times have you heard "wet/dry filters are nitrate factories" or "refugiums need lower flow" etc.
I am just trying to make sence of the difference between the majority of what I read about T5ho and some of the members' experience in this thread...
could it be due to the reflectors? Or are all the RC posts just over-hyping T5?
Thanks,

- Chad

ps - I should add that in the same thread, it was reported that halides with a new kind of "luminarc reflector" are brighter than the Tek T5ho.

I dont find them any cooler than my 175,s. But I agree with the light spread. Big difference compared with 2 halide bulbs over a 4ft. tank versus 4- 4ft. T-5,s.

Chad, I like the output. I think my 4-4ft. bulbs are as bright, as my two 175,s. I would say the halides are more intense in an area under them. I think the T-5,s drop off quicker though.

I have good individual reflectors. And I have bleached sps that were fine under my 175,s. So the intensity is there.

I have MH 175's with 2 40w Actinic's. Thought that was plenty of light when compared to my neighbors 150s with no actinic's(very yellow looking).

I just bought a New Wave T5 4 light fixture made by Sunlight Supply for my wifes new 15g mangrove tank. It sits right next to the main tank so I could plumb them together.

I bought these because I had heard they put out OK light but not great....just right for a low light tank right? Wrong.....they surprised me as to how bright they are. Driving home last night I asked my wife why we left all the lights on and she informed me it was just the tank light. We have 2 daylight, one grow and one actinic in this fixture. Mushrooms and Ric's seem to like the light....we put a couple of zoa frags in and they went brown so we are waiting to see how they do with a little time. Maybe they will color back up.

I was going to change the 175's to 250's but may just remove the NO actinic's and add T5's.

Scott

look at the main company there.. IceCap... this wouldn't be the first time they underhandedly spread false info to sell there product.

I would have to say way over hype.. that would be saying that T5's are brighter than the sun. A big clue is that if a T5 drops off faster with depth it is less intense.



the problem is that companies rig tests, by comparing there absolute best T5 output against a MH output it is very easy to make the MH seam like it has less output.. I can do it here with the same bulb... it is all the angle and location you take your readings from.. thats why when I was testing bulbs I made a fixed bracket that I could only adjust to ensure it was directly under the middle of the bulb.

Ok now for the "T5s make my tank brighter than MH" argument... yes it is true, visually there is an appearance that it is brighter but in reality it is not.. the reason for this is that like VHO and PC a T5 spreads light evenly and if you have 5 bulbs over a tank you are lighting the whole tank evenly reducing shadows so it gives the appearance of a brighter tank. With MH you get more shadowing on the edges depending on the reflectors spread and because it is a point light source there is more shadowing on the edges, but if you look at what really counts, intensity, MH wins hands down.

If anyone in Victoria has an actual T5 set up with 10 or 20K bulbs I can bring my jig over and do some actual PAR measurements to show how much difference there really is.

Steve

Steve,
I should have been more clear - I never said that that Icecap claimed 'so and so' about their reflectors - I said that Icecap reflectors are better. That is the result of par readings comparing their output to that of the Sunlight Supply/Tek reflectors and the Aquatinics reflectors. This information is from the RC thread, and it has had over 4,600 posts so far. Allegedly, T5 bulbs are a complete waste of time without high quality reflectors. All I was wondering is what was going on with some of our members here.
I pride myself on keeping an open mind in this hobby and it has helped me overcome some misconceptions that people have. For example, I chose to ignore the "canister filters are not for saltwater" doctrine and a lot of nano hobbyists have benefited from my nano design.

I still remember when all the stubborn old PC users would get in 'lighting fights' and post pics of how they could keep anemones just as well as the halide guys and gals. I was/am a strong proponent of halide and watched as each one of them eventually made the switch as well. I believed that halide was, hands down, the best way to go and I wouldn't recommend anything else. However, at the same time, I never assumed that mankind had reached the pinnacle of aquarium lighting and that halide is as good as we are going to get.
It sounds like that's how you feel about it:

"I would have to say way over hype.. that would be saying that T5's are brighter than the sun."

No one is saying T5ho is brighter than the sun. No one is saying (I hope) that halide is as bright as the sun. What I am suggesting is that T5ho, with the proper reflectors, is brighter than halide. Of course I would love to see some canreefers do the testing, that way I wouldn't have to blindly accept the findings of our American counterparts. However, from seeing Nate and Paul's Tek fixtures, I don't see how a 175w halide bulb could ever possibly put as much light/PAR into the tank as 175w of T5ho. And the very fact that the readings on a halide need to be taken directly under the bulb is another point for T5 in my books - I would really like my whole tank to be well-lit; left to right, front to back, and not just in a certain spot.

I don't mean to be argumentative, I was just hoping that some of the people who were disappointed with T5 could qualify their results. If they were using good gear like the Tek or Aquatinic fixtures, than I've got a real problem because all that info on RC was baloney (and I wasted multiple hours of my life reading it). If however, they were using ebay or catalina specials with cheap reflectors, than I'm not too worried, because the T5 experts themselves have said that their performance would suck.
Hopefully together we can figure it out.

Peace,

- Chad

heh, now add to this discussion the LED fictures...ie solaris ( ithink thats them)