Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicole8ca
I often here people say how much cheaper T5's are to run than MH. Is it significant? If anyones able to quantify that for me it would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Nicole
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Well, let's take a common 48" long tank. A reefer would decide to light this with either 2x250W MH or a 6x54W T5HO setup. Therefore you've got 500w of MH versus 324 watts of T5 saving you 176 watts per day assuming you had both on for the same amount of time. Over the course of a year that's over 27,000 watts of savings.
Assuming that you changed out your bulbs on a yearly basis, you'd still save with T5HO. Good name-brand MH 250W MH bulbs retail for ~$100/bulb. That's $200/year in MH bulbs. 54w T5HO bulbs run about $25/bulb x6 = $150/year in T5 bulbs.
Running an 8-bulb T5 unit would bring the electricity costs closer (432w vs. 500w) and the bulb replacement cost would pretty much be a wash.
The bonus with a T5 setup is that you'd be able to fine tune your colour temp more precisely using multiple bulbs instead of just one and you would need to add additional lighting to MH to get a dawn/dusk effect whereas that is built into any good T5HO unit.
As for which T5HO unit - I'd get one of the high-end Aquactinics units for maximum output given: 1) active cooling, 2) Icecap SLR reflectors, 3) Icecap 606 ballast (which overdrives the bulbs slightly - costing you a bit more
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