lighting break down

[crendon2003]

I know this is totally newbie of me but can someone break down reef lighting for me i am upgrading my lighitng and dont want to fail. I have PC 260 watts 55 gallon its 4 65 watt bulbs. Are The T5 bulbs better even though they are only 54 watts?? why is that most reccommend T5's?

[acropoorer]

T5's have better bulb choices and I think higher par per watt, but if you want the bomb get t5's with a strip of blue LEDs. The leds will add a shimmer to any kind of florescent lighting not to mention they are incredible at night (1 watt blues look great and I hear great things about the 3 watt blues). If you aren't a build it yourself type, there are T5/led combo's available. I got mine from finnex they make led strips 2' x 2"x2". finnex also makes a combo T5 with led. I can recommend there blue LED but I know there's a lot of other stuff available from other companies. Cree has the best name for led bulbs but mine look great and I don't think they are Cree. I hear icecap has some great bulbs that can be overdriven with the icecap ballasts. Few people use pc bulbs any more except for specialized situations (spaces were a 2' minimum bulb is to big)

[dav_nolen]

The colors combinations you can achieve with the T5s are great. I have a 4 bulb Icecap Retro Kit, with 2 Icecap 660 ballast that overdrive the bulbs to 80w. That along with good reflectors and you will be able to keep anything in your 55g.

[DaJMasta]

There's a number of good online guides out there, but basically you have choices of:

Power Compact

T5

Metal Halide

LED

Or some mixture of those. That list is in order of efficiency, least to greatest, in terms of PAR per watt. If you want the shimmer effect, you need to go with lights closer to a point light source, so it needs to be MH or LED. If your tank is fairly shallow, a lot of PC or T5 will be plenty, but the deeper the tank, the more powerful and directional the light needs to be to reach the depths with reasonable PAR. If you have a mostly deep tank, LEDs with tight optics would give you the best PAR deep in the tank, most tanks will get pretty well covered by a MH lamp or two, and T5 will give you a fair amount of power with the same blanket lighting style and no shimmer effect. PC is uncommon in very large fixtures simply because T5 is more efficient, produces less heat, and is more powerful.

Going from 65W PC to 54W T5 is probably approximately the same, with a little extra power in the T5 bulbs. The real advantage with T5 in this case would be if each bulb had an individual reflector (and a good one), in which case 54W T5 bulbs would be tangibly brighter than 65W PC bulbs. As said, T5 bulbs in standard lengths also come in a lot of varieties so you can fine tune the color and look of your tank fairly easily.

[acropoorer]

There's a number of good online guides out there, but basically you have choices of:

Power Compact

T5

Metal Halide

LED

Or some mixture of those. That list is in order of efficiency, least to greatest, in terms of PAR per watt. If you want the shimmer effect, you need to go with lights closer to a point light source, so it needs to be MH or LED. If your tank is fairly shallow, a lot of PC or T5 will be plenty, but the deeper the tank, the more powerful and directional the light needs to be to reach the depths with reasonable PAR. If you have a mostly deep tank, LEDs with tight optics would give you the best PAR deep in the tank, most tanks will get pretty well covered by a MH lamp or two, and T5 will give you a fair amount of power with the same blanket lighting style and no shimmer effect. PC is uncommon in very large fixtures simply because T5 is more efficient, produces less heat, and is more powerful.

Going from 65W PC to 54W T5 is probably approximately the same, with a little extra power in the T5 bulbs. The real advantage with T5 in this case would be if each bulb had an individual reflector (and a good one), in which case 54W T5 bulbs would be tangibly brighter than 65W PC bulbs. As said, T5 bulbs in standard lengths also come in a lot of varieties so you can fine tune the color and look of your tank fairly easily.

We left out VHO T12's. Some old school people like their actinic. Here's mine with LEDs (finnex), haven't mounted the halides yet but they fit in the square holes with luminarc reflectors.

[crendon2003]

thanks guys now im just trying to find a good place to buy the new lights from and find a buyer for my old ones sucks cause i just replaced all the bulbs less than 2 weeks ago.

[+mcallahan]

We left out VHO T12's. Some old school people like their actinic. Here's mine with LEDs (finnex), haven't mounted the halides yet but they fit in the square holes with luminarc reflectors.

dale...what brand/type of VHOs are you using?

[acropoorer]

dale...what brand/type of VHOs are you using?

Originally, I was using uri super actinic but now I use UV super actinic. I have been told that they are the same company, different name or something to that effect. If I'd have known about the cree 3 watt leds when I started buying this stuff I may have gone to all led for actinic. Still haven't seen the 3 watt cree's but Mike Delgado claims they are the bomb. Maybe in the future after I get an aqua controller...