opinions wanted please

C

cinobyte

Registered Member
Apr 18, 2006
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I have a 90 gal that i would like to house fish, live rock and anemones. My main concern is lighting of course.
all opinions wanted


I am looking at model 1123 which has 4 daylight and 4 atinics total of 432 watts whichs is still less than 5 watts per gallon

http://www.current-usa.com/novaextreme.html

tia
 
I don't have any experience with T5 lighting but I moved to MH lights with my 90 gallon. I believe the light you are looking at might not penetrate all the way to the bottom but luckily anemone's move. I personally wouldn't go with anything less than 3 watts per gallon of day lights and I don't see this quite making that. My suggestion would be to go with more day light. Otherwise make sure you have LR high up in the tank and potentially they will get enough.

The survival rates of anemones is quite low so I would do it right otherwise you will waste more money in dead livestock than you would the lights. Just my opinion and unfortunately this is not an exact science.

Mike
 
My 90g reef does just fine for everything but sps corals. Softies, LPS, crocea clams, sebae anemone, bubble tip anemone, all do quite well in my tanks.
My lighting? 8 NO fluorescent lamps totaling 320 watts. 4 GE daylight 40 6500K, and 4 Philips actinic 03's.
See my web site to see what NO lighting can do for you. The T5 HO will be just that much better.
You can also overdrive the T5's with an IceCap 660 (will overdrive 4 lamps) ballast and get even more light.
 
I will argue probably until the day I die about t5's but most ppl think you have to have metal halides to keep anything other than fish. I wish i could find the picture of the t5 reef tank in switzerland and completely blew everybody away. I have a tek 6x54W fixture in my tank and it penetrates the bottom (90G, No sump) just fine. t5's any many cases have been compared to HQI's and although you don't get the shimmer effect, you can still grow what you like with them. As for talking with Greg at www.reefgeek.com, most American reefers think it's either MH or the highway, when many european reefers have been using t5's and less for many years and have very beatiful tanks full of growth.

One problem i see with the setup your looking at though, is if t5's don't have parabelic reflectors for each lamp, your not getting much better lighting than with VHO's or PC. the parabelic reflectors per single lamp is what will really make t5's outshine the other flores out there.
 
If your looking to keep nems a BTA would be fine under that light. In the halide vs T5 debate i will add that there seems to be a better range of bulbs availible for t5 reef sunlight is about 6-7K colour temp but over here you tend to only be offered 10-14K
 
Looks like I will be going with T5's and maybe a mixture with PC. LFS has 2 really nice reef tanks. One only has T5's other is a mixed bag of t5's and PC. both are doing great and have been for a long time.

I use to keep sw about 10yrs ago when MH was the only thing you could use but from what I have been reading the advances in lighting have come a long way in 10 yrs. and when you weigh the pro's and con's such as HEAT and COST then the fluorescent wins hands down.
I appreciate all the input and who knows maybe my opinion will change once I kill off an entire tank because of the lighting
 
Please keep up posted on your success. As I said before this is still a growing hobby and in my opinion there doesn't seem to be a right or wrong way. We can merely go on each other's successes and failures to form yet another opinion. ;)
 
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