Pc lit reef

I do not understand why everyone harks about pc lighting. In my 40 gb reef, i am running a 196 watt pc light fixture. I have a 12 in. ritteri anemone and have had no problems with him. He his completely content under the spectrum and wattage this fixture supplies. I have many species of soft coral. Granted pc might not be enought for sps, but not everyone wants hard corals. Granted, they do run a bit warm, but i do not run a heater and my tank constantly runs at 80 deg.Why does everyone give these bulbs a bad rap? :-/

 

We've often wandered the same thing, we've got a pc lit reef thats doing just fine. In alot of instances in this hobby it seems people think you need the most expensive, newest tech items to be successful.

 

I think it's just personel preference... I prefer T5 for the variety of bulbs plus they don't produce as much heat, very efficient for there wattage.

 

yeah i totally agree. PC's seem to be totally compatible for a reef enviroment.

 

Bc you said it! they cant really support many types of corals unless you load them up! They take alot of energy ro run and dont penatrate as deep and run warm, and in order to have a good reef you need a lot of them and thebulbs are expensive

 

I don't think they are hated on so much...it is just that they are the lowest possible lighting setup that will sustain (some) corals. With T5 and MH you can obviously keep a much greater variety of corals, which is why they are praised more.

 

PC was an improvement over HO. T5 is an improvement over PC. It's as simple as that. The light doesn't penetrate as well, there are far more different bulbs available for T5, and you don't have to replace them as often. I used to run PC and had sps. They do work. But it was cheaper for me to switch to a T5 setup than to replace just the bulbs on my PC fixture.

If you ever get a chance to put a par meter under your PC lighting and compare it to T5, you'll understand how much of difference there is.

 

This is my colt coral under PC lighting




This is the same colt coral under T5s




nuf said.

 

To be fair, some of the improvement in your colt could be due to the bulbs rather than the fact that it's now T5. My sps was bleaching under one bulb and are now coloring up nicely cause I changed the bulbs. Both were the same color - 14k, and the first set was only 3 months old. Same fixture, same color bulb. Only change was the manufacturer.

 

PC's aren't all that bad on a shallow tank, but just about everything available today can get more light into a tank with less power consumption, less heat, and more variety of colors.

~Will.