you know, I ran into some one to day and he said I was holding back to much on this discussion
SO.... T5s are good for supplementation only on a real reef tank. there I said it. I did get a chance to compare the light out put of T5's against MH, and PC's and I have to say while impressed against the PC's I was totally let down with there performance against the MH, I thought they would do better than 20%.
as for the debate there isn't one. if you want real color not dim, flat, dingy looking you need a better light source like MH. there are more options with MH for color, better coverage from 1 bulb and way more intense lighting.
If you take a tank that has 3 MH bulbs that is 6 foot long, you will need a fixture that has 16, 36" bulbs to cover the entire tank unless they now make a 6 foot bulb. T5's are changed what every 6 months compared to MH once a year, so you are looking at 36 bulbs at say 20.00 each so 720.00 even once a year change out would be 360, as apposed to the MH 300.00 so now look at power, a 36" bulb is around 35watts so that is 560 watts, compared to the MH of 750, so a little better (we'll assume they are both electronic ballast so extra is not important) but at 5.6 or 6cents a KW/H were talking under 50.00 a year difference. so bulb cost still higher for T5's by a long shot if you follow recommendations.
now heat.. lets compare fixtures to fixtures, you can look at Brads twin 150 fixture and I would be surprised if it is going to add much heat at all, but my T5 fixture on my fresh water tank is damn hot and raised my tank by 3 degrees when it is on. so I say this is a non point also. what I would like to do though is take the PC's out of Brads fixture and replace if with T5's because I hate PC actinic and you can't fit VHO's in there
Now, why is it every time there is a tank out there that has some color everyone on the T5 bandwagon has to credit the T5's with all the success. I look at that tank and it looks fake to me, dark, dingy, and flat.. no life.
Lighting is just one part of the equation, look at water chemistry, type of lights, color of lights (were there any non actinic shots of that tank? no cuz the colors wouldn't be fluorescing due to the wave length of light hitting the coral, and yes some pigments in corals will fluoresce a different color than they look in day light depending on the light wave that is hitting them. finding that light wave is the critical part. take one of the corals out of the tank and into the sun, do you think it will look the same? I am almost willing to bet (except I am to poor) that it wont.
also let us not forget about nutrients in the water, water chemistry its self, and so on and so on. the more money you have the more equipment you can get to ensure these are perfect resulting in nicer corals.
here is an example, this picture (excuse the algae was having problems at the time) was taken under 10K bulbs with the actinic off. in the first one the pink on the milli is pink, even out of the tank as I saw when I moved it
In this one there are several different colors, the purple is purple, the green is emerald, and if you look at the green digitata in the right top corner to the left of it is a purple digitata that is a deep deep purple where just below the green and partially under the big milli (about 16" across to give a size reference) is the same purple digitata that looks more lavender. this is the difference intense light makes, as the deep purple one is partially shaded and not directly under the light, but surprisingly the color is what you guys keep loving about T5's and the kind of color I see in that tank you posted.
so what am I trying to say... Quite trying to start debated on something there is nothing to debate.
Steve