lighting

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duster1971

duster1971

Candiru
MFK Member
Dec 14, 2009
700
0
46
Iowa
im thinking of doing a reef tank and want to know what kinds of lights are best and what benifets each light has as well as thier disadvanteges. ive only kept fo or fowlr so reef is new to me and wold like as much info as what works best fe filters skimmers and etc.thank you in advance.
 
Well most would tout MH all the way, but if you have a shallower tank then T5s can do just the trick, though you need alot more bulbs.
Firstly it depends on the corals you intend to keep, some corals need more light then others its just a fact, if you can go with low light corals easily enough with a few T5 bulbs, but if you want a tank filled with high light requiring corals then you need a little more power.
Say you have a 4' tank you could easily get away with 2x250W MH pendants or hood, or you could go even higher (like with a tank deeper then 30") you could do 2x400W MH. Now contrary to some people's opinions, there is a such thing as to much light, to much and your corals will bleach and die.
So in this 4' tank, you could also go with T5s (if its under 30" deep) and I would suggest the total wattage to be around the same to a bit more if you where doing MH, so in this situation I would recomend around 500-600W of T5 now at the standard wattage of 54W that means 11T5s which isn't realy doable so I would recomend 80W T5s so you would need around 8 of them. As far as I know only 3 companies sell hoods like that, ATI, Blua aquaristic, and Giesemann all very expencive (around 1000$ for the hood).

Now the differences (as I see them)
T5:
-cooler, placed closer to tank more light to corals
-not concentrated light therefore less penitration into deaper tanks (500W spread evenly over 4')
MH:
-Hot as heck, have to be kept well above the tank unless cooled really well
-penatrate deep tanks well due to the almost "spotlight" effect of the pendant (250W or 400W concentrated at a point)
-people say the light look better in the tanks (not sure about this one but its possible)
-often need to be suplimented with Acintic T5s (though this is personal choice as you can get MH into the blues, some people debate that the blues are more for estetic purposes then feeding the corals, so they say its better to use a "white" like 10k and suppliment with a T5 or 2)

Thats how I see it, but I'm sure others will contribute other things. In the end the cost for a T5 or proper MH setup is around the same, including quality bulbs and power use. The only major difference is the heat and the depth of penetration
 
Oh forgot something about the Acintic bulbs there is also the opposite argument, that the 14k-20k range has a higher useable % of light as the most light used is in the blues/purples, and they say that the 10k or less are just for estetic purposes (which is what makes a little more sence to me).
Here is a link to lighting info its pretty good and goes over MHs well it will explain the needs of the corals better then I can http://www.reef-eden.net/lighting.htm
 
that is verry helpful but not quite what i was looking for i meant differant spectrum bulbs like 50\50 and acintec ect shuld have frazed ? better
 
duster1971;3797259; said:
that is verry helpful but not quite what i was looking for i meant differant spectrum bulbs like 50\50 and acintec ect shuld have frazed ? better
Click to expand...

Well the link i posted talks about the bulb types partway down the page though it mostly talks about colour temp (like 10k-14k etc.)
 
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