46g Bow front lighting help

[Altohombre]

you dig better than a volleyball player or the website (Digg / All News, Videos, & Images). I love that site.

[RyanG]

Good Site Matt way to propigate it. Open invide to tear me up for my spelling again. Obama was a smoker? No crap! Good for him that he quit I wish I would.

[Altohombre]

you never been to that site before? It is great. You can sort by a lot of different categories. The more interesting they are the more diggs they get.

[fatman]

Buy the best you can afford is the best recommendation. What is best all depends on your needs. Increased depth requires incresed intensity to penetrate the depth. Halide is mre intensive lighting than T-5. If your satisfied with a tank of mixed growth corals of different type, which most people are, then T-5 will give you the most bang for your buck. If you are wanting to get the most SPS or hard coral growth out of the full depth of a deep tank then halide is able to produce those results and no amount of T-5's can. A deep tank is any tank with 18 inches or more of water over the target corals your growing. It depends also on clarity of water and the amount of aggitation of water surface as to a lights penetration capabilities. That is one of the major reasons profession coral propagators use ozone and or UV lights (to privide clear water). People who choose not to use those devices often resort to using a lot of charcoal to try to keep there water clear. But no amount of clarity adds intensity to a lights output. The intensity is directly proportional to the light bulbs area of light output. Large Lumens from small area provides more intensity than same Total Lumens coming from larger area. It is like water flow. Your output in volume can be the same, but when the ouput comes from a smaller nozzle or pipe the velocity of the waters flow is much higher than when it comes from a larger pipe or nozzle. IE hook a pump up with a 1 inch return line, then the same pump with a 3/4 inch return line. The velocity of the water from the 3/4 inch pump will be nearly double of the velocity from the one inch pipe used on the same pump. Thats why when you split a pumps return line into a double return you should make the two returns smaller a smaller size if you still want a high velocity at your outlets.
Basiclly said: unless you are considering possibly running an all SPS tank or want to recoup your costs of maintaining a reef tank by raising and selling corals and you therefore want rapid growth at the least cost, then you can settle for the less intense T-5 lighting and probably be content enough and possibly save some money. If you want the best performance for the most extreme demands then only the halides can put out that performance. Really the best is a combination of halides and T-5 's as I first suggested until a T-5 Guru got upset and ran on the blog, without having anything to argue.

[Altohombre]

thanks to everyone who has suggested and debated in this thread.

[yote]

I'll take my T-5s over my 18 inch deep tank over a halide any day.
Tank stays at 77 degrees.Yeah,I do keep a couple of heaters in the sump.
Got LPS growing like weeds sitting on the sand bed.Got SPS growing great while sitting in 16 inches of water.
Dont need no scientific study to tell me what I can see with my own eyes.

[fatman]

I have not said the T-5 is a bad lighting system. For the majority of marine aquarium keepers the T-% is probably the best purchase considering prices ans performance. The T-% can be a good system with individual reflectors for each bulb, with small distances between the water and the bulbs, with depths medium to shallow and with good bulbs. Like reeffreak said there are 100's of bulbs made for T-5's. However people should still be made aware that they still lack the intensity of Halide which makes water clarity, limited surface agitation of water and depth important issues that can be more ignored with halides. I do not advocate the halides so that someone can run cloudy water and run waves the length of their tanks though. I do warn people new to the trade that do not know whether the are going to later want intense lighting due to deep tanks and SPS corals that they might be disappointed with T-5 performance. To be honest most people with just live rock, fish and a few assorted corals in tanks of around 40 gallon and smaller could easily get a long well enough with NO fluorescents. GARF runs what they call "bullet proof" 55 gallon tank set ups loaded with assorted corals on just NO fluorescents. They do use plenums in their tanks which cuts water depth. I believe they just use 4 NO fluorescents. I still stand on the same ground though. Your reference does not mean a whole lot. Emitted light is great but it still has to penetrate to its source. Your reference is bias scewed as it does away with Par at the target site and only deals with light production. I do not claim that a T-5 does not have the capability to provide the proper wave length light or that it emits a lot of light, I just say that the light is spread out over a greater distance and therefore it is not as intense and therefore does not penetrate as far. And as for ignoring Lux and trying to rate something based entirely on Par at the source, thats pretty absurd. If you T-5 tube was 4 foot long, or the same wattage and 8 foot long would matter as the light intensity would be less, but the amount of light put out would be the same. I do not buy the argument about glass and ripples and such for a reason to give merit to the work, it is flawed, and scewed. Your still trying to say a rice rocket turbo 4 cylinder is better than a 426 Hemi. Apples and oranges. The water pipe velocity analogy still applies.

[Altohombre]

I think a mod needs to lock this thread. Not like anyone is gonna read through all this jibba jabba!

[Bifferwine]

OR we can just agree to disagree and quit arguing! I'll close the thread if I have to, but I don't want to have to resort to that.

[fatman]

I would be happy enough if you closed it. I am running out of ways to say the same thing. Halides have their place where they are not yet being surpassed. I actually would be happy if a lot less people ran halides. That would raise the selling price of my halide grown hard corals when less are being produced and/or being produced at a higher cost. Actually I hope LED's keep improving and dropping in price. There is also a new high output light that requires a cabinet next to the end of the bulb and it is supposed to be the highest output and most efficient lighting now known to science. I think the smallest they have shrunk them down to so far for production runs is 8 foot long unit. Something like a 1000 watt 8 foot tube, with igniter and other apparatus at one end of tube. Make a great light for built in 8 foot long tank. There are light studies and experiments done on set up tanks by Riddle available on the net. He, I believe, readily qualifies as the marine aquarium expert on Reef lighting. If i cared to say the same thing again but in a different way I would look up his material. But alas I do not care anymore. I took two midterms today and do not have another for a week. Now I can get some sleep.