T5 lighting

[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by fkshiu

A more fair comparison would be 250W MH versus 54w T5 HO (the 4-footers) as most 250W MH bulbs are employed over 4' and longer tanks. I do recall Grim Reefer (who is a strong t5 HO proponent) doing a PAR comparison of certain 250W MH bulbs head to head with Ice Cap overdriven 54" T5 HO using his own equipment (not Joshi's results). Although the MH bulbs weren't the highest PAR bulbs around (i.e. the Iwasaki 6500K), the T5s did come out on top.

For the record, I'm running a 3x39W T5-HO teklight over a 46 gallon bow over mainly LPS. I've been completely satisfied with their performance thus far. It's been 13 months since the current bulbs have been in and I have not noticed any drop-off at least with the naked eye or coral growth/behaviour.

I don't think Grim's advocation of HO T5 is overly biased. He does recommend MH when the applications are more suited to the need. But yeah, I grabbed the results for the halide bulbs from Sanjay's article.

Grim has stated in his thread that the T5 PAR results are not from overdriven bulbs.

[Reefer Rob]

One thing you will get with T5s is a very even distibution of light, since the whole top of your tank is covered with tubes. Very little shadowing in the tank, and the corals receive light on all sides, more similar to what would happen in nature. To duplicate this with a single point light you would need to move it across the top of the tank during the course of the day to simulate the movement of the sun.