Anyone using T5 8x54's?

I have a nova extreme 4x54. A few of my corals could really use more light so this friday I'm going to pick up an 8x54. I have been reading up and most of the info is telling me that 8x54 is as good as two 250 halides.

I have a 75g and with an 8x54 i'm getting 6 watts a gallon opposed to the 3 that my 4x54 is giving me. I really want sps but I also want to stay away from halide.

Can I get away with this¿?

 

whats wrong with just the 4? more then enough in my opinoin

 

I ran that much on my 75. I used 2 seperate light fixtures, the Marineland fixtures. Honestly, after I purchased it, I was told "nobody runs that many bulbs on a 75g" and that it was a little bit of overkill? This was told to me by the LFS owner that actually sold them to me on the install date?
Not sure...my corals did do very well, and I was able to keep clams, etc.

But some of the things I did notice....my temp in my tank stayed around 82-83 with the 8 bulbs on, algae was a lot more prominent, esp in the overflow box as the light was forced to be directly on that, and my lights were not hung or in a canopy (have to custom make a canopy to hold that amt of lights). This resulted in me having to take a lightset off in order to do basic maintance. Well...the more you move lights the higher chance you have of breaking them...which I found out when a fixture fell onto the floor.

I have since given my parents the tank (awaiting install) and I only plan on giving her 1 set of lights as she does not want to get a chiller, plus I know for a fact that the 2nd set will be too much for her to handle and will get broke.

On my new tank, I have MH and my corals seem to have already taken off really well. My clams have much better color along with all my other corals, so honestly not sure if 8 bulbs are equal to MH. I did personally like the looks of the 8 bulbs on compared to the 4 bulbs. But I still had to get a chiller...so I dont know if it was worth it, or if it was just astheticly pleasing to me.

 

8x54w is equal to running 2x400w MH. 1 watt of T5HO=32,000 lumens, 1 watt of metal halide=20,000 lumens... So if you think about and do the math on comparing Lumens to watts, T5HO needs to be multiplied by 1.8 to figure the wattage comapred to metal halide. So a 4x54w T5HO is equal to 359watts of MH. MH is point source lighting where as T5HO is the same intensity (pretty much) over the full length of the bulb.

In my personal experience with T5HO's, I have bleached so many corals that came from under MH's. The T5HO's are more intense then 250w MHs. Its comparing apples to oranges. A buddy of mine had 8x54w on a 90g and his corals suffered, he now runs 6x54w on a mainly sps (acro) tank.

When you do watts per gallon, all you are doing is comparing electricity usage, nothing else. 216w T5HO uses 216watts of power, 250w MH uses 250 watts of power, nothing else. The old WPG rations were for people using normal output fluorescents and VHO's.

 

I run T5's 8x54 on a 72 bowed and I honestly do not believe it is overkill. I don't think any lighting, within reason, is overkill. The setup we have works great....

 

I appreciate all the input. It looks like this will come down to my preference. Since I'm not obligated to buy once I order, I'll ask the dude at the LFS to order a 6 and an 8.

 

I have the four bulb T5 setup on a 55. I think you should go with the inbetween option, the six. That way, you will have more wattage/lumens but won't have to be as careful acclimating and placing corals

 

I'm going with a 6x54 retro on my 75g been looking at the geisman setup with all seperate reflectors per bulb and 2 bulbs per ballast, supposed to be a great setup, and W per G on T5 don't really have the same meaning as it did with PC, MH and VHO