Lighting Guru's Need Opinions!!

[jasond]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...readid=1226502

From what I could find, Aquactinic TX5 are workhorse ballasts, and the Solar Flare models have IceCap ballasts.

Seems to be a lot of happy ppl with these lights on RC as well.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by hillbillyreefer

Has anyone used the "new" Glo t5ho from Hagen. Not sure if the unit has individual reflectors or not. Not sure on the pricing either. Any comments would be appreciated.

The Tek light looks pretty sweet!!

Thanks for all the links guys. I've been reading bits and pieces of the RC one,
thanks Mark.

Brad

I bought the glow for my fresh water tank and it is pretty sweet, I would never have the ilusion it or any other T5ho would be able to replace MH (especialy after doing some PAR comparasons) but on a shallower tank like you are using it would work well. I would think that with your tank width two of the fixtures would be pretty good, and I would go for the 36" ones if you are planning on going to a 33 later.

Steve

[gqlmao]

I got a set of t-5s, The price is unbeatable . New waves from sunlight supply pretty much are the same as the teklights but much cheaper,(they dont have the nice black shell). I think they go for like 130 for a 4 bulb setup at golds (without bulbs). So around 230 for a whole 24 inch t-5 fixture with bulbs isn't bad. The price is a bit higher than a power compact, but I'm sure most people rather fork up the additional 50 to 100 bucks for t-5s. I personally haven't fired mine up yet but I'm sure the results are promising from what I have heard and seen.

[fkshiu]

Originally Posted by Nicole8ca

I often here people say how much cheaper T5's are to run than MH. Is it significant? If anyones able to quantify that for me it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Nicole

Well, let's take a common 48" long tank. A reefer would decide to light this with either 2x250W MH or a 6x54W T5HO setup. Therefore you've got 500w of MH versus 324 watts of T5 saving you 176 watts per day assuming you had both on for the same amount of time. Over the course of a year that's over 27,000 watts of savings.

Assuming that you changed out your bulbs on a yearly basis, you'd still save with T5HO. Good name-brand MH 250W MH bulbs retail for ~$100/bulb. That's $200/year in MH bulbs. 54w T5HO bulbs run about $25/bulb x6 = $150/year in T5 bulbs.

Running an 8-bulb T5 unit would bring the electricity costs closer (432w vs. 500w) and the bulb replacement cost would pretty much be a wash.

The bonus with a T5 setup is that you'd be able to fine tune your colour temp more precisely using multiple bulbs instead of just one and you would need to add additional lighting to MH to get a dawn/dusk effect whereas that is built into any good T5HO unit.

As for which T5HO unit - I'd get one of the high-end Aquactinics units for maximum output given: 1) active cooling, 2) Icecap SLR reflectors, 3) Icecap 606 ballast (which overdrives the bulbs slightly - costing you a bit more )

[Reefer Rob]

If the Aquactinics come with come with an Icecap 660 ballast they would definitely be a good choice. Not sure what's in the Tek lights, may only be a Workhorse ballast, which won't come close to a 660. Still, if I remember correctly, the Powermodule has the most PAR of any T5 fixture. You did say you wanted to keep SPS