T5 lighting

[niloc16]

i've been trying to research on T5 lighting setups, and have read a post that was on here awhile ago, but trying to find people experiences with the T5 lighting and sps is very difficult. there was some comments on the previous t5 post on people having montipora and digitata but they will survive under PC's so i'm curious if anyone has info or links to experiences with t5's and acroporas and stuff. i tried researching on the fixtures themselves but it comes up in german but i would like real life experiences other than sales pitches. any info would be awesome guys

[trilinearmipmap]

Yes I have had a T5 setup for over 2 years. 8 x 54 Watts T5 over a 120 gallon mixed reef: softies, LPS, BTA's (split into 3 from 1 BTA) and for SPS a nice big monti cap and montipora digitata.

Besides the montiporas I have not tried harder SPS, I plan to add a few more SPS sometime soon. The monti cap grew from maybe an inch or two to about 9" across over about a year and a half. The montipora digitata grew similarly. For most of this time I have had horrible low alk and Ca levels due to neglect so the limiting factor for SPS growth in my tank is Ca and Alk not lighting.

The LPS do great under my T5's. I have torch, hammer, frogspawn, octobubble, and candy cane coral. They do fine from midway down the tank to the bottom of the tank.

Softies: colt does great, xenia does great. I am unable to propagate mushrooms, they shrivel away and hide, I think the light is too bright for them. I had zoos doing great until they were wiped out by an Anthelia plague.

Overall I do not recommend T5's, the main reason is bulb replacement cost. I have to have bulbs shipped up here, T5 bulbs are harder to find than MH bulbs and costlier to ship. I am happy with my system but if I were going to do it again I would get a 250 DE MH system.

[danny zubot]

8 x 54 Watts T5 over a 120 gallon mixed reef:

That is 432 watts, which is enough for easy SPS like caps and digi's. You want to make sure to have enough bulbs to achieve some good intensity. The other question is, do you want your corals to grow or just exist?

[niloc16]

i want the corals to thrive. i'm in the process of starting a 280 and currently have bought mh setup but i'm thinking of possibly going with 8/80w t5 setup, in europe they are big but i'm nervous as to whether or not they will be good for harder sps.

[muck]

There are some amazing SPS tanks lit with T5s.
Here is one of them that I had bookmarked. Is in german but you can plug it into Babelfish to make some sense of it..


http://www.hausriff.ch/4534/108355.html
http://babelfish.altavista.com/

[danny zubot]

How deep is the tank?

[niloc16]

30". thanks for the link muck but i couldnt find where they only ran t5's i think he was running 250w halides as well

[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by niloc16

30". thanks for the link muck but i couldnt find where they only ran t5's i think he was running 250w halides as well

If that's Iwan's tank, then he's using an eight bulb ATI Power Module unit. It's strictly HO T5's.

[Reefer Rob]

I am 4 months into running a pure T5 setup, and so far I like it. LPS and all the varieties of SPS I have tried grow well side by side. I'm just getting to the end of the new tank cycle that started when I switched to T5s from PCs. Is there a reason why you don't want to use your MH setup?

[Tom R]

Originally Posted by albert_dao

If that's Iwan's tank, then he's using an eight bulb ATI Power Module unit. It's strictly HO T5's.

In the tank info posted it says that the tank is approx 225G (72x30x24) he is using 10 T5's 6 @ 80 watt and 4 @ 54 watt half of them are Actinic. He replaces them every 8 months. Excluding the heat problems with MH the cost of replacing these lights over say 3 250w MH would be substantial (approx $800 over $400)

It also says he is using a number of additives that sound a lot like the Polyp Lab's Reef-Resh system.

Tom R