t5 vs pc

[StirCrazy]

I would stay with your PC's The difference between PC's and HOT5's is hardly worth looking at.. and normal T5's are not as powerfull.

Steve

[Dale]

Hi Don.

I don't have a firm opinion either way but my 75G. tank is lit by T-5's and doing well. I guess it depends on what you plan to stock.
One thing I did do was to build a rockwall using a light diffuser background for support. This allowed me to raise the rocks up and to put my highest light demanding corals on top. Both my hammer and candycanes are doing well anyways (I don't have "high" light corals). The top of the rock ridge is about 6" from the bulbs.
I have two units with 2 bulbs each:
10,000K
6700K
Actinic
Colourmax (came with the unit-when it's time I'll replace with 10,000 or 6,700)

Here's the T-5's in the canopy



and the tank from a little while ago


________
growing marijuana

[albert_dao]

HO T5's are vastly superior to PC bulbs and can, if done properly, exceed MH's in PAR output.

Look at Iwan's tank on RC and any doubts you have should dissapate.

Here's some further reading:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...hreadid=878433

[Reefer Rob]

PCs do not compare at all to T5s with the right reflector. I run 324 watts of T5 over my 72 Gal bow, and all my sps is doing great. Big difference from the 260 watts of PCs I had before (didn't have SPS then). 2 or 3 times the light and way less heat.

Rob

[StirCrazy]

Ok you guys are getting confused.. take reflectors out of the question as that is not what were talking about... a proper reflector on a 150 watt DE MHwill make it seam like it puts out more light than a 400 wat SE MH.

compare aples to aples.. a PC is actualy a T4 which is nothing more than the tube size.. oh and by the way the smaller the tube size the more intence the light is for the same given wattage.

now a 96 watt PC is a 6 foot T4 folded in half so it is 3 foot long. Because of the fold there is a little light loss in the area where the tubes block each other but downwards there should be the same light out put.

I know where there are some T5's running.. maybeI will have to take my tester down there and get some hard numbers on this. the question is how do we compare them? do we do wattages or by lenght?

watages is a little un fair as it doesn't give and acurate measurment of coverage, so I am thinking by lenght.


Steve

[Reefer Rob]

The best testers are corals themselves All the theory and testing aside, the bottom line is they work well. Some of the nicest captive reefs in the world are being kept under T5 lighting. If you know of an SPS tank being kept under PC lighting I would like to see it, so far I have not been able to find one. Before I switched to T5s I did a lot of looking around, and could find very few people who acually used them who didn't like them.

Rob

[TheReefGeek]

take reflectors out of the question

Why would you not consider the reflectors? One of the big advantages of T5 is that they are small and can be reflected really well with individual reflectors. In practice we all use reflectors, so they are very important when considering light setup.

I would choose HO T5's with icecap reflectors over PC with any reflector.

As mentioned SPS can be kept under HO T5s, but not under PC, so no matter what theoretical testing is done, in practice (which is what counts for me) HO T5s outperform PC.

You have to make sure you are getting actual HO (High Output) T5s, not just normal ones.

The T5s are going to be more expensive to buy good reflectors, but it will be worth it if you want to keep higher light requiring animals.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Reefer Rob

. If you know of an SPS tank being kept under PC lighting I would like to see it, so far I have not been able to find one.

Rob

My reef was a PC SPS tank befor I went to MH. I had very good sucess.


No there is a trick you can do which I am playing with or was till I took that tank down and if anyone in town has true HO T5's let me know so I can do a measurment on them (I suspect the local LFS' only have NO T5's) when I was doing was running my PC's at HO levels and there wasa big difference and after 2 years there was still good output.

I have also seen nice sps tanks under VHO and even NO, but what I have not seen is a two year old T5 tank with mature corals over a year old in it. this would be a good indacator of how they do.

Likehave said in previous tests is that the benifit to T5's is that you can cram more under the hood and get even more even lighting than with other types.

Steve

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Reefer Rob

If you know of an SPS tank being kept under PC lighting I would like to see it,

Rob

here are some pics of mine from the PC/VHO days









So now the kicker, lights are only part of the system, and the brighter they are the easier it is to get color and growth but you can get it with out MH it is just a lot harder. So weather you use T5, PC, VHO MH ect.. it just doesn't matter as that is only less than 1/2 the solution, there is also nutrents, alk, Ca, Mg, ect.. temp, salinity and on and on and on.

what I was trying to say in the biggining is that he already has the PC, why throw them away and spen the money he doesn't have to on T5's when he can just add DIY VHO or add a T5 or two to his PC's use the T5's as actinics and get 10000K PC's.. and so on and so on.. I started out with overdriven NO's then moved to PC's with the NO's for actinics, then I moved to PC's with VHO actinics, then to PC's VHO, and a 175 watt MH, then to dual 250 watt HQI with VHO actinics. but on my smaller tank I just took down and that is staying down I had my bubble tip, My brain, a bunch of muchroom and polyp rock for over two years under 24" PC's and 1 VHO actinic, but for my SPS I have found the best combo is the MH that I have now.

Steve