Opinion of running t5 over a 4' 120g.

[epidemic]

Any opinion or light set up, bulb color or anything else? Ive never tried T5 and know very little about them. Any info. helps.
Thanks
Derek

[clownnut]

the best color in my opinion is blue+ 11K 11K blue+.

[smeese]

Kiss your coraline goodbye! I got rid of my T-5's the color was good but there was something I did not like.

[clownnut]

Kiss your coraline goodbye! .

:confused: :confused: :confused:

[REEFSTOCK]

I think he is talking about the bleaching of coraline.

I observe that it is the direct bright lights. New types of corline take over the old ones. and in the indirect spots it is as strong as ever.

We can't keep up with the corline growth over here, every one of our systems are run by t5!

[epidemic]

I am willing to bet it isnt as cool as MH, but I am trying to minimize heat and evapoation if I am moving to an appt and I am happy to see the coralline go:)

How many bulbs should I shoot for if I want to keep a good amount of SPS?

[REEFSTOCK]

4 would work
6 is plenty
8 whatever

If your going to get a tek hood, the 8 will look nice over it.

We use 4 bulbs over 24" grow out tanks for SPS and they work just fine.

If it were me and I was doing retro: 6, tek hood: 8.

[epidemic]

I will likely go retro for the price. Will I have to worry about the depth of the tank (24")?

[epidemic]

As far as bulbs I would like to squeeze at least one 65K in there. When I ran 250w Iwasakis on my 125, some of my sps had colors that I have not been able to reproduce with any other lighting. Mostly the blues and purples.

[clownnut]

well, i can't keep my coraline algae under control. now i have to clean the inside every 2-3 days. the only change i made was up the T5 hours and cut down the MH.

[jquigley78]

I have been playing with bulb colors for the last year and have found that for me the combination I like best is:

Actinic (URI)
11,000k
6500k
11,000k
11,000k
Actinic (URI)

I found that the yellow helps bring out the blues in the tank that would otherwise be cancelled out by all the other blue light. The URI actinics are awesome and flouresce things amazingly better then the blue+.

[David Grigor]

To muddy the waters even more, My prefered lighting is UVL Acintinc/whites and UVL SuperActinics. They seem to be the best of both worlds IMO, SPS/Acros placed high ( top 8-10" ) are amazing yet also very friendly to LPS in the bottom half of the tank. Good choice for a community tank. When I went from 3 bulb setup to a 5 bulb setup, coraline reduced some, don't get near as much coraline dots on the glass as I used. Under the 3 bulbs it did get annoying as I do like to keep all coraline off the back and sides as well for the cleaner look.

But the one from most of us will probably agree on, you for sure don't need Icecap overdriven to be successful. Matter of fact, I think it's a total waste to do so......

[epidemic]

I was thinking something like 3 UVL actinic, 1 65K and 1 blue +, but that is just a thought and I know very little of this type of lighting so its very uneducated

[David Grigor]

Rarely will you get it right the first time, what works best for your tastes and the corals you have. So probably plan on buying a few other bulbs to try out as well.

I tried the ATI 65k, ATI blue+, ATI aquablue, UVL super actinic, UVL actinic whites in just about every # of bulb combinations possible before I settled with what I liked the best. So take your best guess knowing you will have to play around a bit further once you get some experiences.

[sea monkey]

Coraline wont grow on the top half of my tank , it was everywhere with PC's

[jquigley78]

I have the 6 bulb tek hood about 3" off the water and I have coraline everywhere and I have to scrape the glass twice a week, although I only do it once a week at most.