T-5 Lights

We will be running 8 t-5 lights w/ ice cap ballast which brings them up to 85 watts each.

We have soft and lps. Maybe a clam in the future.

My question is.....I'll have -4 50/50 (12k) 3 actinic
2 white (10k)
available for use (if not broken upon delivery :) I'm trying to figure the best mix.........Do I leave out the actinic or 50/50 ?

Your advice would be appreciated. One more question, one ballast will come on first for an hour or so. Should I have most of the actinic come on first? That would be giving the corals a longer period of "their light".

 

As for which bulbs, with t5s everyone has to try different combos and find out what works for them. Theres no "right" way to do it. Have the actinics come on first. It gives the corals more light that they want and need, and it gives the fish and other animals a lame sort of dawn/dusk cycle. Better than nothing though.

 

I run my actinics from 8 am to 930 pm I run the rest of them 1030 am til 6pm. I just try to simulate daylight a little. Less light in the early and later hours and brighter light mid day. There is no perfect light set up though.

 

If you're switching over from an old PC setup or weaker light setup, I'd consider gradually increasing your light over a couple weeks. This is a sort-of light acclimation for your corals. Otherwise they won't be used to all that bright light all at once.

 

What size tank do you have? Overdriven bulbs for softies and lps equals overkill in my eyes!! Are you planning on SPS in the future?

Happy lighting!

 

We had vho w/ icecap ballasts. They had 4 bulbs 660 watts in a 72 gallon bowfront. Moved them to 120 gallon w/ 8 t-5 on icecap ballasts.

I'm not real sure on sps , but am interested in clams and lps w/ softies. We are planning on running 4 bulbs for about 11 hours or so and starting the extra 4 bulbs a couple of hours a day only and each week add an hour or so to the time. I knew better than just burning them all at once.

I always figured to run actinics first like the dawn dusk, but I also read that the blue actinics can be seen better by fish/corals so it isn't as helpful as we think. It's just less for our eyes to see. So then I started second guessing myself on the set-up. :-/

We are....strike that....I am a bit concerned on how much light it will be but we...strike that...he figured add it all and then take away what we need to if it ends up too much. : (Guys.....more is not always better)

We've done this 10 years and it seems nothing has gone right the last couple of weeks and we've made more stupid mistakes with this darn tank. Between orders backordered numerous times, wrong items sent, wrong parts ordered, almost killing all our stuff (seriously) I'm ready to drown myself in my own reef tank!

 

Lights came in !

Nothing broken !!

One more question.........if corals are looking like the light is too much, do I take out an actinic or one of the others?

Not sure if too much actinic is possible??

 

too much actinic is not possible. you should just cut back the daylights [10k bulbs]

 

That's what I was hoping to hear ! Well, they are set up now and it looks great !
4 lights come on 9am-9pm 2 acten and 2 50/50
4 lights come on 2pm-4pm 2 daylight and 2 50/50 (we'll add another hour next week)

The color looks great. This is just double what we had on the 72 so I was pleased to see it look great and not too bright. The reflectors allow us to angle the front and back light towards the tank which made it really nice.