Any one testing T5 lighting?

[Irisservice]

Any one testing T5 lighting Yet?

[phistio]

i have to be honest...i had never heard of T5 lighting until now.

so...i got to researching, and went to http://www.lithonia.com and looked for any useable information of specifications. while the website had a lot of information about specific luminance...it supplied little information of spectrum in degrees of Kelvin.

so i hopped on the horn...got a nice guy named steve to help me out...

he told me that the T5 and T5HO (HO denotes-high output) produce a spectrum of 4,100k...much too low for the requirements of a reef...a T8 only produces about 700k, and that they carried a LPG830 bulb that is there highest in degree of kelvin at 8,000k...also, FWIW 75 watts is the most powerful bulb they make...

in my opinion, these lights appear to not be well suited for a reef tank...but i'll keep on researching them.

how'd you find out about them?

[Irisservice]

I was told that ge makes a 6700K Bulb.

[phistio]

i haven't visited GE's site yet...but still, aven at 6,700k...it's not yet blue enough...very close though...

are these lights substantially cheaper? you've intrigued me with the new lights...thanks for the find! perhaps, in time, manufactuers will pay attention to our needs as reef enthusiaists...

surprisingly enough steve from lithonia lighting knew i wanted the information for a reef tank...so perhaps they're already looking into reef and special interest lighting.

[phistio]

the more i've thought about it...the more the lights would perfectly suit a refugium! what do you think?

[Seadazed]

First off my knowledge of this is limited so take what I say w/ a grain of salt. There's a couple of guys at Nano Reef.com that have T5 setups (one lives in England and the other in the US). According to the guy in the US you cannot purchase actinic bulbs within the country.....yet. But the guy in England (Sahin) that has them has the actinic and daylight. His tank looks AWSOME! If anybody is interested in seeing how it looks let me know and I will post some pic's here for you to look at. Btw, Sahin has a Tridacna Maxima in his tank and it is one of the deepest blue Maxima's I have ever seen.

[Irisservice]

Ya lets see that Pic!!!

[Seadazed]

Here it is as promised.

[gizmo]

Yeah, I think I read that T5 is suppose to be a cheaper alternative to PC. I'm in the process of getting some myself.

--Tony

[Irisservice]

Keep us up to date!!

[vpham97]

I"m waiting on UPS to deliver my T5 lightning. I'm going to overdrive them w/ my Icecap 660 ballast. As for the actinic, I"m going to use T8 actinic. T5 actinic should hopefull be available in the U.S next year. T5 is going to cost less to light up a 4 foot tank then PC.

T5 use less electricity, but they put out very bright light. They'll produce less heat then Metal Halide(so that I don't have to buy a chiller.)

[Irisservice]

Were did you purchase them from?
What size bulb did you get and how many?
What is the kelvin of the bulbs.

[vpham97]

T5 have the potential to replace Metal Halide for those of you who do not want to deal w/ excessive heats.

I'm doing beta test for a company. The endcaps for my t5 is not water-proof. You'll have to wait until about next January to be able to buy the waterproof T5 Endcap. With the t5 endcap, you just hook the light up into a regular Icecap 660 or Icecap 430 ballast, and that will overdrive the T5 even brighter. I think the bulbs I'm getting measure about 46.5 inches. I"m getting 2 T5, and 2 T8 to go on a 75 gallon Tall. On the Icecap, I'll just use a mix of actinic bulb(T8, T12) on the same ballast. Icecap is currently working w/ about three different source to try to get the actinic T5 available in the U.S Outside the U.S., actinic T5 are available in Europe. I have actinic t8 and actinic t12 running on my 120 right now. The actnic blue t8 is a whole lot brighter then the t12 URI VHO Superacinic

As for the bulb, you can order them right now from an electrical supply company like Granger. The 65K bulb cost about $15 each from Granger. Or you can order them from Reef Light place for about $20 to $35. For actinic blue T8, you can get them from Pet Warehouse, or Petco.

As far as I know, you should be able to run a reef tank w/ 65K alone, w/out the actinic. It should be good for reef or planted tank. T5 is becoming a big thing in Europe, some of those European T5 fixture over there would cost about $1,000 for a fancy one(w/ moon time cycle.) They should be a lot cheaper in the U.S.

[spsfreak]

here is a link were you can buy them
www.happyreefing.com

check out this thread on reef central
http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=128423

[Irisservice]

I think I'll wait a little longer see if the 03 and 10k come out.
Then I put 3 - 03 and 3 - 10ks on a 72 Gallon that should look nice and bright, in less than 6" of space.