Lighting: T5 vs Metal Halide???

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by TheMikey

That makes a lot of sense. I was doing some PAR readings on my tank last night and was getting about 680 PAR on the bottom of my 15G (about 16" from bottom of light to bottom of tank) with a 4x24W T5 setup. I'm using 1 x 15K, 2 x 22K (all aquascience), and a stock Actinic. I thought that was WAY too high.

Regardless, though, all I really care about is if my SPS has nice polyp extention (and they do!) and good colour.

yup and like I have stated in other posts, I now believe that given the right water flow and water quality you can grow SPS under a 60 watt bulb, but the growth will be slow and the color not the greatest.

when I first started out I had 10K PC's and overdriven NO actinics, and I grew SPS, they were close to the top, and only had ok color and slow growth. I added a 175 watt 10K bulb and I got sa little more color and a little more growth. then I changed out the NO actinics for VHO actinics, a little lore of each again. so I decided to take the plung. got two 250 watt AB bulbs for a steal (1 month use on them) found a source for two advance M80 ballasts, bought a full sheet of spectral aluminum and made reflectors and or sold 1/2 the board at that time material to make there own, and I came up with a nice design that pumped out the light.

with this set up I couldn't add Kalk fast enough so I added fans for more evaporation, and kicked the Ca reactor into high gear.

from testing T5's I found out they put out about 1.5X the light that a same lenght PC does (a lot better than I expected) and a PC puts out about 10% more light than a VHO of the same lenght and color, unless you running and IceCap ballast on your VHO then it is way less but thats another story)

I do believe there is good use for T5's. I use them on my FW planted tank and am very happy, if heat is a concern then ys use them, but I think the cost is prohibitive personaly

just to put out my thoughs, lets pick a 48" sunlight supply 8 bulb unit. so the fixture is 494.00 and bulbs are 25-35 so we'll say an average of 30 each X 8 = 240. so for 1 year you need 480 worth of bulbs for a total of 970.00 for the first year of operation.

If we go MH we can get a 48" sunlight supply Maristar metal halide fixture which come with the two 250 watt MH HQI bulbs and two T5 actinic bulbs for 814. sence the T5's are only being used for color suplementation I would run them at least a year and from testing my MH bulbs over a few years I can say I have no problem running them for 16 to 18 months, but I will say for the pourpose of this compararason 12 months.

so initial year the MH is 150ish cheaper., now ongoing bulb replacment every year for the T5 will be 480.00ish and the MH will be 260.00 using 100 buck MH bulbs. power consumption wise, just in bulb rating the MH will use 612 Watts plus about 3% for the power factor of the ballast so say 494ish watts.

The t5 will run 440ish with the power factor. so for power savings it is not as much as people think.

anyways it is supper time..

Later

Steve

[Canadian]

I'll go on record stating that I think MH is the best simple option for reef aquarium lighting.

With that said, I'll play devil's advocate and post a link where the exact opposite consensus about this topic was reached elsewhere:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...readid=1609217

Every time this topic is discussed the recommendations become so dogmatic and obstinate it's painful (and I mean from both camps).