pmb_67
Fish Fanatic
Evening all,
Ok, so I'm halfway through my lighting upgrade on my tank - 5ft Rena Aqualife - having got rid of one of the old 2x36W T8 luminaires that came with the tank and replaced it with a Deltec Razor T5, 2x54W (as the 2x80W was about 1cm too long!) with those lovely gull-wing reflectors so the light goes down into the water, not all over the place. I've had the new unit in place a couple of weeks so according to my LFS chums I can look at the next one pretty soon - question is, what colour lamps to get? I've always run 3 x white and 1 x blue T8 and LFS suggested the same for T5, but I don't like the fact that when only one of the luminaires is on (I run each for 9 hours, with 2 hours difference between - so 2h of 2 lamps, 7h of 4, 2 of the other 2) the colour is quite different to when the other one is on alone...
So, I had a new idea: pop a pair of Aquabeam 600's (reef blue [i.e. all blue] or maybe marine blue, 60% blue 40% white) between the two T5 luminaires, have these come on first (using the dimming controller), then 1 pair of T5s, then the other, then T5s off in sequence and finally dim the 600's out at the end of the day so the poor old poissons don't get that weird lights-snapping-off moment (or, for that matter, the retina-burning start to the day they have now). Anyone any thoughts on this?
Final question - if I do this, so I'm up to 4xT5 with powerful LED supplementation, can I keep SPS corals? All water stats are stable (Salinity 1.025, pH 8.3, KH 7.6, Ca 430, Mg 1350, NO3 around 2, PO4 undetectable) and I've got serious turnover, am keeping LPS fine (even under T8, actually) but am hankering after a bit of acropora joy...
Thanks,
Paul
Ok, so I'm halfway through my lighting upgrade on my tank - 5ft Rena Aqualife - having got rid of one of the old 2x36W T8 luminaires that came with the tank and replaced it with a Deltec Razor T5, 2x54W (as the 2x80W was about 1cm too long!) with those lovely gull-wing reflectors so the light goes down into the water, not all over the place. I've had the new unit in place a couple of weeks so according to my LFS chums I can look at the next one pretty soon - question is, what colour lamps to get? I've always run 3 x white and 1 x blue T8 and LFS suggested the same for T5, but I don't like the fact that when only one of the luminaires is on (I run each for 9 hours, with 2 hours difference between - so 2h of 2 lamps, 7h of 4, 2 of the other 2) the colour is quite different to when the other one is on alone...
So, I had a new idea: pop a pair of Aquabeam 600's (reef blue [i.e. all blue] or maybe marine blue, 60% blue 40% white) between the two T5 luminaires, have these come on first (using the dimming controller), then 1 pair of T5s, then the other, then T5s off in sequence and finally dim the 600's out at the end of the day so the poor old poissons don't get that weird lights-snapping-off moment (or, for that matter, the retina-burning start to the day they have now). Anyone any thoughts on this?
Final question - if I do this, so I'm up to 4xT5 with powerful LED supplementation, can I keep SPS corals? All water stats are stable (Salinity 1.025, pH 8.3, KH 7.6, Ca 430, Mg 1350, NO3 around 2, PO4 undetectable) and I've got serious turnover, am keeping LPS fine (even under T8, actually) but am hankering after a bit of acropora joy...
Thanks,
Paul
