T5 lighting questions

[Delphinus]

Ok so I guess it helps if I get my facts straight. Just looked at the ballast and it's 4 leads not 6. So to wire up 8 lamps I could go with one lead to each set of 2 lamps, or do them all in series with all 4 lamps leads wired together. Would there be a difference? I'm leaning towards doing 4 sets of two.

I see what you're saying about doing 4 lamps on 2 ballasts but this is just to get me going for now. I might add more ballasts down the road and/or more lamps depending on how tight it is up there with everything. It bears mention that this is supplemental lighting anyhow, the main lights are 3 * 400w Radiums. I am going for a dusk/dawn effect with the t5's and hoping for a wee bit of coral fluorescing much like what I had when I had my old 75g going. Back then I ran 110w URI VHO actinics and I really liked those. I've heard that t5 actinics aren't as good as the old VHO actinics and so far when I ran t5's on my smaller tanks I haven't found an actinic that was as strong as those, but there are more choices available.

Anyhow I don't know if I want to go with all actinics or even super blues for that matter seeing as the Radiums are already pretty blue and I don't really want to go for a discotheque blue theme on the tank, so I might go for a mixture of lamps with maybe half of them being either blue or actinic and then something else for the other 4.

As for the starts .. I bought these sockets that are shunted which I thought were better for the Workhorse ballasts with whatever starting mechanism those ballasts use? I don't really understand the nitty-gritty details but if it's better to replace the ballast down the road with something else, I can look at that, but for now I'm sort of mandated of using what I already have in my packrat pile and making it work.

[fishytime]

Im a carpenter not an electrician so I wont even attempt to claim to know anything about that sort of stuff,..... but I have used a lot of different T5s.....Im using the KZ superblues ATM and I really like the color they produce(although not a true actinic bulb)

[Fish Head]

Im running 24" bulbs 1 actiniic and 1 fiji pink, also have 2 wh 7s that i would like to run when i build my cube. running uri bulbs now

[Delphinus]

Is it better to run 2 T5's in series, in this case 2X24w; or is it better to shunt one socket over to the second? Darn it, I think I'm going to have draw a diagram. Stay tuned for some mad MSPaint drawing skillz!

[Delphinus]

Ok so what I'm referring to as "in series" is "option A" and "shunted" is "option B."

I'm trying to find some wiring diagrams online but not finding anything on Fulham's website that seems to give blessings to the idea of doubling up a lamp of any size per lead. But I know people have done this but if it shortens lamp life then I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not..

wiring.jpg

[Delphinus]

This ancient thread from aquaria.ca seems to suggest you just twist the 4 red wires together and run the lights in series if you want 2x110 out of 2 lamps. Would the same principle apply to 8x24w? The lights might actually be overdriven slightly.

http://aquariacanada.com/forums/showthread.php?t=244

Argh, my head is swimming. Need me an electrician to chime in methinks!

[phi delt reefer]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

This ancient thread from aquaria.ca seems to suggest you just twist the 4 red wires together and run the lights in series if you want 2x110 out of 2 lamps. Would the same principle apply to 8x24w? The lights might actually be overdriven slightly.

http://aquariacanada.com/forums/showthread.php?t=244

Argh, my head is swimming. Need me an electrician to chime in methinks!

The wiring is the easy part. An electrical engineer maybe better suited to comment on how the ballast will react to multiple bulbs and bulb length.

Heres an additional thought on this subject;

the ballast spec advises this ballast is only good for 4x54w bulbs. If you have a look around MOST ballast manufacturers have a specific ballast for 24w/39w t5s and seperate one for 54w and higher. I believe this has something to do with how much energy the bulb needs to start (think of what happens when you run a larger power compact on a ballast rated for smaller bulb, it just flickers but never fully fires) In this scenario the bulbs may recieve too much juice on start up and possible fizzle or just not start. I could be wrong but there has to be reason for this difference. WH5s are rated for the 2 foot bulbs you are looking run and they can only run a total of 4 bulbs, the Wh8s can run 6.

Remember that a ballast can only start so many bulbs at once - this is also why you can not run 8 bulbs. A good example of this is the ICECAP 660 ballasts - they can run any combination of bulbs up to 16' in length as long as they DONT exceed 4 bulbs. Once again this relates to the amount of energy required to initially start the bulb.

You said you were running three halides - is there room to instead run two four foot t5s in the front of your tank and two at the back? you would have better coverage that way too. Also your cost goes down significantly for 4 foot bulbs dont cost twice that of a 2 foot bulb . 4 foot bulbs also have higher par than their smaller equivalents. Same goes for reflectors, the 2 foots ones arent half the cost of the 4 foot ones. Get the LET reflectors from the REEFGEEK site - they are the best in the industry.

here are the specs from the fullham site;

http://www.fulham.com/Detail_Categor...type=WorkHorse

on the right side of that site they have a bulb configuration/wiring diagram assistant. in the first dropdown select T5 Linear HO, in the second one you will see none of their ballast can drive 8xF24HO

one last thing (this is getting long, sorry ) - overdriving T5's throws off their spectrum - so if you go and pick up some nice actinics at a specific spectrum then overdrive them you wont get the "Advertised" colour you were looking for. Plus it reduces lamp life

cheers

vince