Which replacement 48" T5HO tubes?
- Thread starter FreshyFresh
- Start date
I agree. I do think if you're trying to get the most par go for the ray 2.
Yeah, true! It's about $40 more than they Planted +. but more PAR definitely = more $. LOL.
UPS dropped the new lamps off today. I had forgotten how involved the packaging is for two 48" lamps! One big rectangular ~4ft box LOADED to the gills with packing peanuts. Buried in the packing peanuts is two ~4ft cardboard tubes with plastic end-caps taped on like a mofo. Each tube containing a Zoo Med box wrapped in foam sheeting. You could about run over this box with a UPS truck and not break the bulbs. I bet the packaging alone would be over $10 for an individual to buy.
Some definite misinformation on the Docs side. The Flora Sun Maximum Plant Growth lamp says 5000K on the box, not 6000K like on the Docs website. No biggie for me given the plants I have.
The only disaster is, all the clear plastic clips that hold the lamps in place in the Odyssey fixture broke into pieces as I removed the old lamps. The plastic had yellowed and turned brittle. :bang: The lamps are just kind of resting on the slide-out plexiglass lamp cover now.
We'll see how it goes. I may reduce the lights on time from the normal 8hrs for awhile given the new lamps..
Some definite misinformation on the Docs side. The Flora Sun Maximum Plant Growth lamp says 5000K on the box, not 6000K like on the Docs website. No biggie for me given the plants I have.
The only disaster is, all the clear plastic clips that hold the lamps in place in the Odyssey fixture broke into pieces as I removed the old lamps. The plastic had yellowed and turned brittle. :bang: The lamps are just kind of resting on the slide-out plexiglass lamp cover now.
We'll see how it goes. I may reduce the lights on time from the normal 8hrs for awhile given the new lamps..
+1 for giesemann. I use T5HO still as well. I know LED is more cost effective and look nice. But there were not too many options for the size of my tank dimensions and would require coming up with some custom brackets. The ones I liked I wasn't prepared to shell out the dough just yet...LOL.
From what I was looking into LED would likely run almost the same wattage to get comparable growth. Don't have to replace bulbs but the initial fixture(s) would run quite a bit more.
About 6 months later and the ballast went bad on my twin-tube 48" Odyssea T5HO. So much for the lamps we were talking about above! The lamps wouldn't light to full capacity. When I opened up the remote ballast assembly, two of the capacitors were swollen and leaking.
I scrapped the fixture and mail ordered a 48-60" Current Satellite LED+ fixture for $129 shipped. It's been in place about 3 weeks now and doing well for the lower light plants in this 55g.
I scrapped the fixture and mail ordered a 48-60" Current Satellite LED+ fixture for $129 shipped. It's been in place about 3 weeks now and doing well for the lower light plants in this 55g.
I have a single bulb t5 over my 75. I am running a Coralife colormax 48" 54 watt 6700K and my plants seem to like it just fine
John, I did that for a few months with my 2-tube fixture. Just ran one lamp. I'm not sure if this ultimately lead to the ballast failure, but like you say, my plants also did fine with just one 54watt tube over my 55g. What plants do you have in your 75g? I'm surprised it works well for you because that's a lot of area for just a single lamp. Old school I know, but that's less than 1watt per gallon by quite a bit.
Well, my fixture is built for only one tube. It came with the tank when I bought it used. My tank is planted with java ferns, anubias and staurogyne repens. The tank has been running for about 3 months and I have been having issues with brown diatoms. I have added a third stage to the mechanical filtration section of my sump with a phosphate filter pad (cut to fit). I also added an aquatop HOB (PF40UV) with a UV sterilizer and substituted its filter cartridge with another piece of phosphate filter padding, and set it for minimum flow to maximize the amount of time the water is exposed to the UV. Finally I have added nerite snails (about 2 dozen, more to come) and six oto cats. My anubias and java ferns are looking pretty good, but I'm still having issues with the diatoms on my staurogyne repens. Time will tell how successful I am
