High Tide Aquatics

T5HO bulb selection question

Gomer

Gomer

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I will be moving next week and my 10g frag tank is overflowing lol. I will be turning my 40g acrylic into a gyre frag tank. I already have a 4x39watt Tek fixture but it has GE6700 starcoat bulbs. Not really what I'd call ideal for SW ;)

I really like tanks that pop out (usually cause of 420nm bulbs) and are generally crisp white. I hate exaggerated purple/blue tanks.

Since I need 4 new bulbs and atleast 2 more koralias, I was thinking of getting all from Marine Depot (will have free shipping)

Having no experience with SW T5 bulbs I am hoping I can get steered in the right direction. I am THINKING of the following. Please feel free to shoot it down and suggest something else.
1x UVL Super Actinic Bulb
2x UVL Actinic White
1x UVL 75:25 Bulb

Thanks for any suggestions.
 
I'm using ATI T5 bulbs (from ReefGeek -- I guess they don't carry ATI at marinedepot). You can check out ReefGeek to compare the UVLs and the ATIs. I just got new bulbs and I'm seeing better fluorescence from a pair of BluePlus bulbs than I got from one Blue+ and one actinic.

There are a couple of long discussions on ReefCentral with some of the T5 veterans concluding that true actinics don't seem to be very effective in T5 bulbs.

So I have 2 Blue+, one aquablue and one procolor. The aquablue is fairly white, while the procolor has a lot of red in it -- I haven't decided if I like the procolor or not yet.
 
I am also partial to ATI bulbs. The UVLs that I have tried esp the super actinic don't put out much par at all. If I were to do a four bulb config I would use the same as doliver.
2 Blue +
1 aquablue
1 procolor (or ge 3000k or ge 6500k)
 
I second the Blue plus bulbs, they have that sharp blue spike that gives you some REALLY nice fluorescence, and the upside is there's pretty damn close in light output (PAR) to "white" (10000/11000K) bulbs.

For ATI I think they're called blue plus, for Geisemann they're Actinic Plus (although they are not purple ones).

Here's a thread over at RC where he took numbers, so you can get an idea how much lighting "oomph" each bulb has.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=918935&perpage=25&pagenumber=1
 
well, I ended up going with a full UVL setup but I Might be regreting it. Might because I am not sure if ATI would have been better.

I am running:
1x UVL Super Actinic
2x UVL 50:50 (Actinic white)
1x UVL 75:25

Colors are blaah. Some colors poping but not that much. neon toad stool isn't that neon, the blue acro is muddy etc etc. the oranges and red are nice, but the blues and greens, not so much. At first I thought it might be a little bleaching from the move, but I popped on a MH last night and the color was back.

The UVL setup I listed seems to have a lot of 420-460 light so not sure if the ATI would fix that.

My comparison is to the stock 70watt sunpod bulb. Almost makes me want to pick up a second one and run 2x70 sunpods instead of the t5 (just for color reasons, no idea how the T5's will do on growth).
 
The UVL actinic is good for deep greens, a good bulb to blend with the ATI blue plus. Otherwise there's just too many damn T5 bulbs out there :p
 
if I am lucky and can find an ATI blue plus "locally" for a reasonable price, I might swap out an actinic white for it.
 
I tried the UVL 50/50 actinic whites, but they didn't add much more fluorescence compared to the blueplus bulbs. They also added a pinky purple which looked funky to me, but some people might like. The bulb color mix I like to far is:
aquablue
blue plus
Geissemann daylight
blueplus
aquablue

And I'm using the Aquascience aqueblues instead of the ATI's. My corals fluoresce, but the tank looks a bit more natural instead the 1960's blacklight poster look. The Aquatinics TX5 hood also angles the bulbs, so the different colors are blended a bit.
 
i myself use the giessman bulbs. currently running 3 11k's and 1 antic plus till i get my ballast back. then i will go to the 3 11k's 2 antic plus and vho's fr antic, the antic plus isnt a overly blue color but gives it a little pop, this is on a 50g breeder sps tank, get great color and growth, which i know is a combo of thing's but i like these bulbs myself
 
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