T5 Q's

[fishytime]

If you can get aquascience bulbs, I would consider those....they out par giesemann, KZ and ATI....I would either go with their new "duo" or the 22000k for color...

[Myka]

Sorry to disagree with you Doug, but I was really disappointed with the AquaScience 17,500K's that I bought. I found they looked AWESOME at first, but the color spectrum really faded within 6 months. The bulbs are now 9 months old and look like 10K's.

Imo, if you have good quality MH bulbs running with well chosen ballasts to produce a respectable amount of PAR then who cares about the PAR of the supplemental T5s? Plus the fact that in your case you have 4 T5s, so even if you choose T5 bulbs with lower PAR you will still be getting a fair amount of PAR in addition to the MH. My preference when using T5s as color supplementation for MH I like to use an equal amount of KZ Fiji Purple and UVL Super Actinic.

[fkshiu]

If you've got both MH and T5, use the MH as your main PAR bulb and supplement the colour with the T5. This allows you to use a yellower (IE higher PAR) MH bulb while getting the colour pop with the T5 bulbs. A mix of a single KZ Fiji Purple with UVL Superactinics will give great supplemental lighting. I've also found that Geissmann Actinic+ bulbs gives excellent colouring as well. Since colour is so subjective, try different combos to get the look you want.

[fishytime]

Originally Posted by Myka

Sorry to disagree with you Doug, but I was really disappointed with the AquaScience 17,500K's that I bought. I found they looked AWESOME at first, but the color spectrum really faded within 6 months. The bulbs are now 9 months old and look like 10K's.

Imo, if you have good quality MH bulbs running with well chosen ballasts to produce a respectable amount of PAR then who cares about the PAR of the supplemental T5s? Plus the fact that in your case you have 4 T5s, so even if you choose T5 bulbs with lower PAR you will still be getting a fair amount of PAR in addition to the MH. My preference when using T5s as color supplementation for MH I like to use an equal amount of KZ Fiji Purple and UVL Super Actinic.

6-9 months is all you should expect from your T5s in a lighting unit that isnt actively cooled....I cant find the link to the actual in tank experiment where they had ATI bulbs one one side of the tank and Aquascience on the other.....flow and coral placement was mirrored on each side of the tank as closely as possible and after six months the difference in growth of the same coral species was quit noticeable.....

Fiji purps and "true/pure" actinics are a waste of a bulb IMO....great for color but not much else, and the fiji purps produce a red spectrum(algae growth) that most tanks not running a ultra low nutrient system, cant handle.......why not get some usable par out of your "color" bulbs( like the Aquascience 22000k and G actinic+)?

[fishytime]

Found it!
http://archiv.korallenriff.de/Lichttest/T5-1.pdf

[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by fishytime

Fiji purps and "true/pure" actinics are a waste of a bulb IMO....great for color but not much else, and the fiji purps produce a red spectrum(algae growth) that most tanks not running a ultra low nutrient system, cant handle.......why not get some usable par out of your "color" bulbs( like the Aquascience 22000k and G actinic+)?

54W Fiji Purples produce like 330 PAR man...

[fishytime]

Originally Posted by albert_dao

54W Fiji Purples produce like 330 PAR man...

But do most tanks need that much red

[fishytime]

the "red light" theory http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2008/12/aafeature1

[Snappy]

Originally Posted by albert_dao

54W Fiji Purples produce like 330 PAR man...

Ok but at what depth does their par loose penetration value?

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Snappy

Ok but at what depth does their par loose penetration value?

hmm I was going to make some smart a$$ remark about T5s here, but there is something that bugs me here and because of it no one can answer your question.

it is fine to say a bulb will produce 330PAR or 400 or 800 ect.. but at what distance and through what?

T5s have a fairly rapid drop off, but is this realy true... nope, it only seams that way because of some of the stupid ways people are rating bulbs. same thing happened with MH and it lead a lot of people to thing they were getting something better than they were (IE when the DE bulbs first came out) light is light and it loses intensity with distance at about the same rate weather it is VHO, T5, MH, LED. but alot of people do measurments from 1 or 2" away from the bulb wich is useless as if you look at the loss of intensity over distance for a rough guess say it will lose 1/2 the value over 4X the distance (don't quote me on that I can't remember the exactr ration but this is for an explanation)

so if you measure the PAR at 1" and get 1000 PAR, then measur at 4" you should get 500, at 20" you should have 250 ect... so now this has been exploited by fudging the distance by different manufactures.. if I do the same measurments at 2" I would get 750 as a start, but at 8" I would get 375 which is the same as you would get in the first senerio at 8" but which one sounds better.

there needs to be a standard brought in between all bulbs MH, Flouressent, LED, ect.. and as far as I am concerned any measurment taken under 10" is useless for comparasons as the numbers are so large everything looks good.

I think a good way of measuing would be to take a PAR reading at 10", then one at 20", and one at 30" this would give you some good referance numbers for any common tank depth and give you a very good idea of the amount of drop off asociated with the light bulb.

personaly I am putting LED over my next tank.. got some of the stuff on order already.. going to cost me about 500.00 to build it but it should last 12 years or more and give me an ouput comparable or higher than a 250watt DE fixture with the consistant lighting that T5s give you. oh and I will be able to change my color with two dials. so if I get tired of 20K, I can change it to 10K, or 11K, or 12K, or maybe 12.5 ect.. you get the idea

Steve