105W CF vs 70W MH

I'm gonna vote halide.

 

looks like most are leaning towards the MH even with that much of a watt difference

 

Its not the watts that actually matter.......its the lumens that matter most and MH bulbs produce more lumens per watt then CF does....

 

......wish i had a par meter, id solve this right now. lol

 

MH put out is, head shoulders knees and toes above most others. EG streetlights are this bulb type for a reason.

 

the truth is, this answer can vary quite a bit as not every light fixture puts out the same amount of par or lumens as others of that type. Generally halide is more efficient(and can be alot more), with only the worst setups losing to a good compact set up.

worst case for the cf is it puts out roughly 1/3 the light of halide watt to watt.

 

i will say one thing, I have seen some nice nano cubes ran on stock lighting, and it seems that when most people upgrade to HQI they use the 70w viper for the 12g nano cube and the 150w viper for the 28g nano cube. I really think the only way to find out for sure is with par meter, or by trying both lights on the same tank for maybe a month each and seeing the results

 

Go with the MH, par should be far superior to the CF.

 

only thing about the 2 CF bulbs, you can do a dawn/dusk effect. you can use a 14k MH bulb too, but maybe add a few 3w cree leds with the MH to get a dawn/dusk effect. Im running 2 10k 175w mh on my 55g with 8 leds and it has a awesome effect. pics are in my DIY $100 cree led thread. its a sticky at the top of that forum. good luck!

 

Only thing is, the 28G CF quad version by JBJ is not 2 double cf bulbs, its 1, 4 pin quad bulb, but 2 tubes are 7,000k (and are called actinic, however that works ) and 2 10,000k. And to my knowledge jbj is the only manufacturer of a quad bulb and they do not make different color temps. I searched for weeks for a different bulb when I was running this tank as a planted freshwater, thats why i got the 70w mh, cause i didnt want the cf bulbs for my plants. I dont know why they designed the bulb like that, I would rather have 2 50W CF bubls than 1 105W quad bulb.