Lighting help

[bottled-ocean]

Metal Halide help I have a 250 w for my tank should I add some t5 bulbs ??

[Ron Reefman]

What is it you want the t5 bulbs to accomplish? Do you think you need them? Are you looking to make things better for the corals (better light spectrum), or are you looking to make things better for you to look at (add some 'pop' to the colors)? How many MH bulbs do you have and over how big a tank?

I had a 5 bulb MH over my 180g tank. It had 3 250w and 2 150w bulbs. I could get bulbs to make the colors I wanted because there were 5 (kind of unusual for a 6' light. I switched to using 2 fixtures of 3' with each having 2 250w MH and 2 39w t5's. I didn't see too much difference in the look. Even when I would turn the t5's off or on, the MH really overpowered the color from the t5's. So I added 36 3w led stunners and even they only helped a litte bit. The corals had been doing OK and continued to do OK under the new fixtures. But other things kept improving in the system and corals did start doing better near the end. Then I switched to all leds. My eyes are much happier now, which is good for me. But after about 8 months now, the corals seem to be doing every bit as good, maybe even better than they were under the MH and MH &t5 lights.

You might consider getting leds from BuildMyLED. they custom make long, slender fixtures that you can totally customize the color to what you want. Spectrum to make the corals happy, or make you happy, or maybe even both. And no replacement bulbs every 9-12 months.

[grigsy]

Don't bother switching to the LEDs. What you have now will be great for a reef tank. Trust me, I have tried everything.

If you want to add T5 bulbs for color, just try a higher Kelvin metal halide bulb like a 20K.

Are you running double ended or mogul based?

Radium, Hamilton and XM all have great 20K bulbs for mogul based.

PHX makes a nice looking 14K that really is more of a 20K but has good growth.

[asid61]

Keep what you got. I can't see the benefit of adding T5 to MH lighting.