T5 lighting questions

[Delphinus]

Couple questions I'd like to bounce off you folks..

1) What guage wire do I need to wire up T5 sockets? It looks like 18 guage solid core that needs to be able to push into them. Is this correct?

2) The plan is to have 8 24" (24w) T5's on the light rack. I have a Workhorse 7 ballast which is supposedly good for up to 220w. 8*24=196w so I'm within the limits of the ballast but the ballast only has 6 leads. Can I wire all 8 lamps in series with all 6 leads, or would it be better to split it in two, and do 3 leads to one set of 4 and 3 leads to another set of 4? These are only 24" lamps so the linear length of the lamps is 16 feet (I have no idea if that's an important detail or not..)

4) For the "actinic effect" what do people like better: URI or Gieseman? Or are they about the same?

[Rbacchiega]

1) uh...wha
2) see #1
3) WHERE"S QUESTION THREEEEEEE
4) I'm a big fan of Gieseman

[Delphinus]

Sorry I guess I was counting up in bitshifting instead of sequentially. In binary that would be questions 001 (1), 010 (2), and 100 (4). That's my story and I'm sticking with it. It has nothing to do with lack of sleep or not enough coffee .. no wait, why am I denying this - I'm pretty sure lack of sleep, lack of caffeine affect pretty much everything I do.

Anyhow, so you're of the opinion that Gieseman > URI then .. okey dokey... thank you!

[phi delt reefer]

1. 18 guage solid core should be fine and is used in most fixtures/diy

2. workhorse ballast are not T5 specific -they HARDSTART which is tough on bulb life expenency. with that said, TEK uses them in their fixtures as does Aquatantics (spelling?). Their justification is that hardstarts are ok if you arent turning the lights on several times a day and in our reefs we usually turn them on once a day. I have no data to back up the longetivity issue but with the number of bulbs your looking to drive and the 8-12 month bulb expectancy i would error on the side of caution and change the ballast to an Accustart or similar.

if you do choose to stay with the workhorse, get a second one and run 6 off one and two off the other (you can get a wh5 instead of a wh7 to save some $$) or 4 and 4. That way you can run a dawn dusk effect if you want and you can still have some light should one ballast blow. Workhorses are pretty cheap to begin with anyways. I know with IceCap they have a length and bulb number max depending on the ballast. 6 leads on the ballast would make me think 6 bulbs is the max (running 36"/39w at most)

4. ATI bulbs have the most par from what actual testing shows. By actinic are you looking for the most blue look? try the ati blue plus (comparable to the kz super blue) but has high par. Alot of halide users use them to give there tanks a more 14-15k look while running a 10k halide.

-vince

[Pescador]

My Workhorse 33's use 18 awg solid as well. I second the motion for separate circuits for more dawn-dusk options.
But I'll have to go with Geismann as well but I was looking for the purple fluorescing look not the CF kind of blue.

[Delphinus]

Ok so I guess it helps if I get my facts straight. Just looked at the ballast and it's 4 leads not 6. So to wire up 8 lamps I could go with one lead to each set of 2 lamps, or do them all in series with all 4 lamps leads wired together. Would there be a difference? I'm leaning towards doing 4 sets of two.

I see what you're saying about doing 4 lamps on 2 ballasts but this is just to get me going for now. I might add more ballasts down the road and/or more lamps depending on how tight it is up there with everything. It bears mention that this is supplemental lighting anyhow, the main lights are 3 * 400w Radiums. I am going for a dusk/dawn effect with the t5's and hoping for a wee bit of coral fluorescing much like what I had when I had my old 75g going. Back then I ran 110w URI VHO actinics and I really liked those. I've heard that t5 actinics aren't as good as the old VHO actinics and so far when I ran t5's on my smaller tanks I haven't found an actinic that was as strong as those, but there are more choices available.

Anyhow I don't know if I want to go with all actinics or even super blues for that matter seeing as the Radiums are already pretty blue and I don't really want to go for a discotheque blue theme on the tank, so I might go for a mixture of lamps with maybe half of them being either blue or actinic and then something else for the other 4.

As for the starts .. I bought these sockets that are shunted which I thought were better for the Workhorse ballasts with whatever starting mechanism those ballasts use? I don't really understand the nitty-gritty details but if it's better to replace the ballast down the road with something else, I can look at that, but for now I'm sort of mandated of using what I already have in my packrat pile and making it work.

[fishytime]

Im a carpenter not an electrician so I wont even attempt to claim to know anything about that sort of stuff,..... but I have used a lot of different T5s.....Im using the KZ superblues ATM and I really like the color they produce(although not a true actinic bulb)

[Fish Head]

Im running 24" bulbs 1 actiniic and 1 fiji pink, also have 2 wh 7s that i would like to run when i build my cube. running uri bulbs now

[Delphinus]

Is it better to run 2 T5's in series, in this case 2X24w; or is it better to shunt one socket over to the second? Darn it, I think I'm going to have draw a diagram. Stay tuned for some mad MSPaint drawing skillz!

[Delphinus]

Ok so what I'm referring to as "in series" is "option A" and "shunted" is "option B."

I'm trying to find some wiring diagrams online but not finding anything on Fulham's website that seems to give blessings to the idea of doubling up a lamp of any size per lead. But I know people have done this but if it shortens lamp life then I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not..

wiring.jpg