t5 wattage

[rebrob]

i am pretty close to buying my t5 lighting system but i just wanted to know something specific.

I have read a lot of threads that say these babys are really good, so does that mean if they are 54w they are acting like 70-80w? The reason is because i think I have read threads where a tek t5 system had a little less wattage than an MH system and things worked out well.

I am thinking of moving my 72 inch bow front reef from a poor MH system (2 pendents/175w each = 325w) to a tek t5 (6 blub system= 324w). It seems this is a better system, i just want to make sure i am reading everything right.

FYI: The main reason i am leaving MH is cost to upgrade and inability to buy the chiller, so the T5 direction seems to be the way to go.

Thoughts on T5 wattage?

[rebrob]

Anyone? Charlie?

[Samper]

I have 6 54w t5s above a 75 gallon and they do great for softies/lps. I have one piece of sps a green digitata in this system and in 5 years time all it's done is encrust about the diameter of a golf ball. I guess it just depends on what you wanna keep but if you look around people are keeping everything with them. Softies/lps would be the norm though. They just don't have the punch through the water like a halide does.

[Ninong]

With appropriate individual reflectors, T5 lamps are an excellent choice for many situations. Your particular situation, especially if you are trying to avoid purchasing a chiller, is probably well suited to T5's. Your tank is not too deep for T5's to be effective. Tanks that are more than 24" deep are better served with metal halides.

Wattage is a measurement of power consumption and nothing else. It is impossible to compare wattage between different types of lighting and it is even impossible to compare wattage between identical lighting systems, such as 175w metal halide lamps. A Ushio 175w 10,000K metal halide lamp puts out three times as much PAR as a Venture 175w 5000K metal halide lamp. They are both 175 watts but the Ushio is three times as productive as the Venture.

[rebrob]

Thanks Ninong and everyone else for your thoughts.

Last question. BUlb set-up for the t5 tek light 6 bulbs. I like to accent with actinic but not too much blue. I think of it as your average/regular set-up, but of course there is no average. Are the 6600k really yellow compared to 10,000k, like MH's are?

thanks for your help

[Reefland]

I think a balanced approach would be for 3-10k's and 3 actinic.

[Ninong]

I would go with Reefland's suggestion: half 10,000K and half actinic. See how you like that. You can always switch to 2/3 10,000K and 1/3 actinic to see if you like that better.

This is one of those personal choice things.

[rebrob]

I am having a hard time finding 10k t5's. Are they the same as the 11k's? ATI sells 6000K as Sunlights, but isn't that quite yellow. SHould i get the 6000k's instead? Also, there are blue plus and actinic 03's, which are the ones i should use? I thought Actinic 03's.

Sorry for being such a newbie

[Ninong]

OK, if the manufacturer calls them 11,000K, then those would be the ones I would go with, along with the actinic 03's.

[Reefland]

Agreed.

[rebrob]

bought the system,thanks for all your help

[Reefland]

Awesome! Where did you pick it up from?

[rebrob]

got it from custom aquatics.
Thanks again for all your help