Hello everyone. I am interested in purchasing the Odyssea 72" Quad T5HO light for my 125 planted tank but I have a few questions. First off, is it a problem that the lights do not span the entire length of the tank? Instead, they are staggered 57" bulbs. Also, what category of light would the fixture put me in? I'm not going high tech, so it does not necessarily need to be high light, but a decent level of medium light would be nice. My tank is the standard 125 gallon that's six feet long and 21" tall if I'm not mistaken. I have also been looking into a custom three bulb Catalina Aquarium 72" fixture, but if I can get the job done with the Aquatraders fixture, I'll gladly save a hundred dollars. Where would a two or three bulb Catalina T5HO fixture put me light wise? Do their reflectors really add to the PAR that much? Thank you in advance! Also, I would really like to hear from people who have used either product or are pretty knowledgeable about how lighting works in aquariums. Thanks!
Aquatraders Odyssea T5HO questions
- Thread starter aaron7353
- Start date
Hi there, the only drawback to the bulbs being staggered the way they are is that you're forced to run all 4 bulbs to get even lighting. The drawback to having to run all four bulbs is that you'll be FIRMLY into "CO2 NEEDED" territory with all 4 bulbs running (high lighting conditions). The Odyssea reflectors aren't that bad so you're not going to notice a huge difference between them and the Catalina fixture.
I can't comment on your custom fixture you're looking into since you didn't give any information as to what you'd be looking to get done.
That answers my question, thank you very much. How high would I need to raise the light in order to drop me down from the CO2 NEEDED area? Also, what's a good photoperiod? 8 hours? More? Less? Thank you again
Well with all 4 bulbs running you could get away without the co2 if you had an extremely short photo period, like 4 hours. With just the two bulbs you could do an 8 hour photo period with minimal algae.