The problem with T5's is they lack the intensity to realy color the corals in deeper tanks, what you are seeing in thoes pics is basicly actinic shots, this is the good thing about T5's. with them you can put 6 on a small tank and go with 4 actinic bulbs and two daylight type bulbs and you get the floressing color of the corals like crazy, if you look at the back grounds of thoes pics all the non coral areas are dark and not lit up very good so you can tell the tank lacks the bright daylight intensity that MH will provide.
As for acros, depending on how deep they are any light will make them grow, lighting is a small part of SPS coleration, there is also the nutrents (or lack of) alk, Ca levels, and so on and so on. the problem comes to play is that the more colorfull your SPS is it seams the more light they need to remain that way. this is because from what I have been reading the color appears when the SPS expelles the algae from inside it, the algae is brown and in low light conditions an abundence of the algae give the corals a brown color. as the coral gets more and mor elight it expells the amount of internal algae as a fewer amount will produce the same amount of food for the coral. this also causes the corals to produce pigments to protect it from UV and causes the coloration. Don't confuse this with actinic coloration theough as that is from the algae giving of a different floressence.
an easy way to tell is to take the coral out of the water into day light and see its color. if it is brown in sunlight then you are getting the color from the actinic lighting, if it is the same color out of water as it is in the water then the color is from the light intensity and other conditions.
My huge Milli I used to have under PC and VHO was only colored in the tank with actinics on (other wise it was brownish) after I upgraded my lighting to 250 watt MH it got to the point when it was a medium blue when out of the water and vivid blue under the lighting.
Rich uses NO lights on his tank with SPS in it and gets some nice color, maybe he can pull us a frag and tell us what color it is in the sunlight compared to in the water.
Steve
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