t5 vs pc

[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.

[Reefer Rob]

Don
To answer your question, 2 T5 tubes that will fit the length of you tank would probably match the light that you have, but I think you would be happier with 4. You will need to acclimatize your tank using window screens, and you will go through a new tank syndrom, but in the end you will be happy with the results.

some things that happened when I switch from PC to T5:

brown and rust colored zoo changed to grey centre with orange fringe
brown zoo with slight blue tint that was not doing well is now recovering and spredding, and is blue with green fringe
one ricordia faded quite a bit, but recovered to way better colors that before
I lost a couple of heads from my blastomussa, but the rest are holding
my branching hammer looks like it wants to take over the world
the top 2" of coraline on back wall cooked (back wall is all clean now- looks better)

I still smarts that I paid a lot of money for a Coralife 2 X 65 fixture that is a peice of crap IMO, and gave me brown corals. All the LFS are now carrying T5 fixtures that cost not much more than PC fixtures. IMO PC lighting is not a viable light souce for growing colorful corals.

Rob

[midgetwaiter]

I'm using 2 Coralife dual T5 strips (2x14w normal output) on my 20 gal and 1 strip on my 13 gal (15" high). I started with them on my old 15 because I got a really good deal on them and after upgrading the tank I'm sticking with them anyway because I'm pretty happy with them.

There is something with T5s that leads to greater intensity than you get out of PCs or thicker fluorescent tubes. I've had more than one reefer actually look at my tank and then turn to me and say, "T5s? really?" I think they they just do a good job of emitting light over the entire length of the tube, something you don't get out of regular NO or VHO tubes. Whatever it is it works.

I don't keep anything that requires really high light levels but have been successful with softies, xenids, zoas, mushrooms frogspawn, open brains and ricordias. Nothing you couldn't keep with PCs too but IMO the T5s do it better. My pink zoas which are real light lovers are going crazy.

One of the drawbacks I've found are that the lamp intensity seems to be really high for the first hundred hours or so. It's normal to see a sharp decline in output during this time but in seems to be a big change with these fixtures. I bleached a BTA and a ricordia with a new fixture a while ago. Be careful changing lamps. The actinic bulbs they come with really suck too, they don't put out much at all. I switched mine with 20000k blue bulbs and am much happier. T5 actinics in general don't have a great rep. Non coral things like macros and coraline don't seem to like these much either.

In your case I'd probably not recommend you bother upgrading with these unless you went for HO T5s with individual reflectors. I don't think you'd see enough of a change over the PCs you have to justify the expense. A Tek fixture with 3 or 4 HOs would be a pretty big improvement though.

[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

[Reefer Rob]

OK, as requested, here are a few shots of my tank.

Here is a full shot; I need a lot more corals


This is the lights; front hinges for feeding, whole top hinges for maintenance.


Two weeks ago


Today


Two weeks in my tank



Seriatopora


Pocillopoa frag 2 months ago; just starting to take off now, see picture with blue acro.


Hairy shrooms; used to be mostly brown


Happy hammer


Ricordia


Zoos; were rust colored before