Quote:
Originally Posted by Stones
Thanks for the compliments Ryan. Here is a pic of my tank from a few weeks back. Forgive my photography skills as I can't seem to get the white balance set correctly for the life of me.
I'm using the Sfiligoi Stealth 8 x 54 watt fixture and the only corals which I keep are SPS. I thought that after switching from 2 x 250 Watt metal halide that I would have to shuffle some corals around to move them higher in the tank but that has not been the case. I can keep acros on the sandbed with no ill effects. My corals are also starting to colour up much faster than when I was using metal halides. I recently moved this reef in September of 2008 and after which almost all of my acros browned out on me. I was using the halide setup until December of this year with near zero improvement in colouration. As soon as I switched to the T5 fixture, I noticed colours were coming back in less than a weeks time. The colours still aren't anywhere near what they were before I moved but at least im making some progress now with the new fixture.
I don't have the links handy but I've read through a thread on RC where 8 x 54 watt T5's (in a TEK fixture) were compared to 2 x 250 metal halides and the T5s actually came out on top for par readings, even though they used less watts. T5's also produced more even par readings throughout the tank whereas the par readings with the metal halide varied considerably due to shadowing of the point source.
I would definately recommend T5's to anyone thinking about making the switch or just getting into keeping SPS. With that said, I would not recommend T5's for all setups. Tanks over 30" deep or cube type tanks would be situations where using metal halide setups would work much better than T5's. |
Isn't that pretty much a top top of the line t5 fixture?(sfiligoi)
also, what t5 fixture, bulbs, reflectors and ballasts vs what halide fixture, bulbs, reflectors and ballasts were used in this comparison?