What Lighting?

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by 'Ol Nobodaddy

I thought the genius of T5 was there energy savings and money savings

not really, you end up having to put more wattage over the tank and still have less intensity, better and more even coverage, but less intensity.

tank a 2X2 tank as an example, 1 250 watt MH will light the heck out of it.

it would take say 12 T5's to evenly light it, which works out to 288 watts.

now going from the same perspective a MH pendant could be raised to light a 3X3 area at about the same intensity as a T5 set up sitting right on the top. in this situation the MH would be way more power friendly for the same intensity as even if you used 12 bulbs, and stretched them out a bit, it would be 468 watts.

also when you look at time for bulb replacement, at a 1 year interval the MH would be say 80 to 100 bucks a year buying locally, 12, T5 bulbs would be 252.00 (24" bulbs) to replace (and that is a J&L prices which are about 15 bucks a bulb cheaper than the Island) say you do your T5's every 18 months the MH is still cheaper to replace. so for me it would be 384.00 to replace 12 T5 bulbs, also the chemical pollution of disposing of that many bulbs is way worse so environmentally the less bulbs we can get away with the better.

Steve