Wow....Im suffering from some serious light envy here. Looks wicked man!

How on earth did I miss this thread?! That is by far the nicest stand I have ever seen. In-fricken-credible.

Tagging along

Your tank build is coming along very nicely. I'm sure you will be very impressed with that fixture once you get some bulbs in it. Have you found a source for the 5ft T5 bulbs yet?

Thanks for all the nice comments...

I'm still a complete noob as far as tank husbandry goes so I'm hoping this tank will be a massive improvement in that respect. I was very sloppy the last time around but I'm going into this one armed with a mountain more reading under my belt.

Last tank was softies and LPS and I had casualties even with these. I'm not surprised as I'd sorta just dump calc and alk into the tank and test every now and then. This tank will be primarily SPS if all goes well so I'm planning on being more diligent and prepared.

The old tank I think also was a little light on the hardware side of things.

I think the ASM G1-X I was sold was really under-sized. I also never got around to saving up for a second 250w mh so i only had one inside a spider reflector to span a 3.5 x 18 x 18 area. Hardware isn't everything but I believe it will help me out a great deal.

It appears that I can get the ATI bulbs I want from Proline (through Golds) or through Aquarium Obsessed. Have only gotten a price from AO and it was really good. My light arrived in-tact and quickly so I'm not adverse to giving Will some more of my business.

Red Coral can get in KZ, Giesemann and Aquascience bulbs for me but ATI are what I'm really after (based solely on reading the T5 thread on RC).

There is always reefgeek for the ATI bulbs as a backup too tho in the end that would likely cost me more.

Question for T5 users...I understand that a whole bank of lights goes out if one bulb burns out. Is this true? If so I think in the case of hard-to-get bulbs I may want to order a couple extras of each kind...

I think the Canreef sponsor "progressive reef" also has ATI bulbs...you might want to check them too.

Not 80w unfortunately. I did ask but thanks though...

That is strange as proline doesn't carry ATI and that is where I would order the 80w KZ and Aquascience from. HMMM as you said you do have other options for the ATI bulbs. BTW nice setup.
Kevin

Nothing's set in stone Kevin. If you could please PM me a price per bulb for the different brands perhaps I can be tempted =)

I did quite a bit of research into T5 lighting before I switched over from my old metal halide setup. Like you, I also was planning on going with all ATI bulbs despite how hard they were to come by at the time. Then I stumbled across this article:

http://translate.google.ca/translate...F_enCA273CA273

Seeing as aquascience bulbs are carried by most of our Canadian vendors, I thought I'd give them a try based on the results of the above experiement. So far I'm very happy with the 22K and 15K bulbs however I haven't tried any of the 17.5K duos yet. The 15K bulbs are more like a 10K bulb though as they emit a much more yellow colour than my Kz 14K New gen bulbs.