Did you switch from VHO to T5? Would you do it again?

[dougchambers]

It's time to replace VHO bulbs and I've read a ton of information on the T5s. I wanted to hear from people that switch from VHO to T5 and see if they would do it again.

Did you see any color shifts in your corals?

Which ballast are you running?

Any changes to your heat loading on the tank?

Thanks,

Doug

[scubadude]

Bump!....Am equally as interested as Doug

Anyone got new pics of their tank w/ T5's ?

Rocky

[dougchambers]

Rocky,

I've started the retrofit. I picked up 4 reflectors, and enough clips and lights to replace our 6 VHO. After building the new support brackets in the hood, I decided to add two (2) more T5's for a total of 8. I need to rewire the Icecap and get more clips and bulbs. My local source is out of Actinic bulbs as they are stuck in Customs. I should have everything setup late Monday night.

I've got the VHO before pictures and will post after pictures once the T5s get installed.

Doug

[Caesar Augustus]

Is the watt per gal ratio the same between t5's and VHO?I mean does a t5 still require 5 wats per gal or so?
Napoleon

[dougchambers]

The magic "Watt/Gallon" method of calculating lighting requirements seems to be loosing favor as the different types of lights are being released. i.e. Metal halides, T5, etc...

Our old 48" VHOs were rated at 110W/bulb.

The T5's are rated at 54W/bulb. However, we are driving them with an IceCap 660 which reportedly runs the bulbs at 80W.

If you believe what others have said, 80W of T5 is touted as being brighter than 110W of VHO. It's the new math... and no, it doesn't make sense.

I should have everything fired up Monday night so we will be able to tell.

Doug

[mrok12]

We have a local guy who sells these. Check out his site

www.happyreefing.com

MROK

[Joaco]

All German reefers I know and almost all at www.korallenriff.de (German board) are very pleased with T5's

At that board, they run a few tests for over a year, in which they changed MHs (HQIs) for T5 and documented the results:

In this pic you can see the 265 gallon reef (1000 liters) from the German board owner.
The left half has a 400 watts HQI over it, the right half of the tank is using 6 x T5 (total 320 watts)



for many more pics and the test itself, go to

http://www.korallenriff.de/koriff21.html

on that page, go to Technic Tips, and there to the section:

ATI Beleuchtung, Berichte und Tests

All pages are in German, I will look for an online translator for you.

If anyone has doubts after using the translator, just let me know and I will tell you what it says, I speak German since Kindergarten ;)

I'm moving this thread to the Lighting forum.

Joaco

[Joaco]

Here you have another German reef that uses only T5's:

http://www.korallenriff.de/atibilder.html





Joaco

[Joaco]

Originally posted by Joaco

All pages are in German, I will look for an online translator for you.

Here you go (thanks Ninong) :

http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Joaco

[Joaco]

Originally posted by Joaco

In this pic you can see the 265 gallon reef (1000 liters) from the German board owner.
The left half has a 400 watts HQI over it, the right half of the tank is using 6 x T5 (total 320 watts)

A more general pic:



for more:

http://www.korallenriff.de/ati-test2.html

All those links are part of the main link I posted in the first reply.

Joaco

[7thheaven]

Is there any brand name in T5? Though There is a T5 in our contry,
I don't know exactly our T5 is right one.

[traveller7]

Originally posted by 7thheaven
Is there any brand name in T5? Though There is a T5 in our contry,
I don't know exactly our T5 is right one.

You may want to look for the brand names:

GE Starcoat - ttp://www.gelighting.com/eu/litlib/t5_oem_brochure.html
NARVA - http://www.narva-bel.de/

These will be a good start.

By the way, have some soju with a CASS chaser for me.

[dougchambers]

Joaco,

Any idea what bulb combination they are running over the German tank you posted?

I loaded our 8 T5s tonight, and well... I hate it (so far)! I'm not a big one for accepting change, but darn!

I'm loaded with 4 GE Starcoat, 3-ATI Blue, and 1 ATI Actinic. Our local source is out of Actinic, but I don't think one bulb is going to help much.

On the bright side, these things are bright on my IceCap 660s.

Likes:
Bright!
Good light saturation from top to bottom of the tank.
The blue and purple SPS look great

Dislikes;
The color seems very washed out
The blue/actinic bulbs aren't even close to the URI 03-Actinic
The greens are pale and not very vivid.

I've heard that the ATI-Sun bulbs don't spike as hard in the green zone like the GE. That might explain the washed out look of the green corals.

I have hope! The German sites look much better. I just need to find the right combination...

Any ideas?

Doug

[dattack]

Any picture doug of lighting before and after using T5?

[dougchambers]

Dattak,

I've got a few "Before" on my website under the "New T5" section. The bulk of everything on the site to date are with the VHOs.

I should be able to get a few "After" pictures tonight and will post them. I've got about 40% of the light blocked for now, but you can definitely see a difference.

-Doug