T5 four bulb choice w t5/led hybrid

[Goubli]

I am about to replace my 4 bulbs in my t5 led hybrid. The par is low for t5 (180-200ish) and I think I want to increase the white light amount due to my ability to run way more blue Spectrum via the leds in my Geiseman aurora hybrid fixture.

My leds have four diode clusters over the 60” fixture. Clusters are each composed of 4 blue (410-430 nm), 4 (430-480nm), 1 (390-400nm) and 1 (465nm).

The white channel is composed of 1 green (490-560nm) one red (630-790nm) and 8 white that includes a mixture of red/orange/yellow/green.

As for t5, right now I have a kz super purple, kz new generation, kz super blue and ati true actinic.

I have grown sps well in this tank, albeit slowly and I am looking to increase growth and colors. I have done a lot of reading on the board but it’s mostly advice w t5 only and 6-8 bulb setups.

I am not a fan of blue tanks and I enjoy accurate color rendering of the fish via more white spectrum. I see some high success from someone using 1:1 blue plus and coral plus, but that was without LED supplement.

I am realizing (via par meter) I am going to need to up the LED intensity to 80-90% to really get the PAR up. So that means I am going to have a lot of Blue from the LED which the white LED won’t overcome in the setting of highly blue t5s. I am ok w the tank looking more blue for a period during the day if it really helps the corals during the intense lighting period necessary.

I can always tone led intensity way down for beginning and end of day. I also have dimmable t5 capability and would prefer to have some t5 on for better coverage during the evening viewing periods.

I am looking for suggestions here for my bulbs. Do i really need the actinic or should I forgo it since only 4 bulbs? Also, should consider two 6500 tropics bulbs?

Help me out please!

 

[jda]

I like pairs of 6500k and Actincs, but some find them too yellow. They can also color up coral pretty well in time once the corals respond. If you can turn up the blue LED if they are too yellow, then you might like this if you are not into windex.

3x Coral Plus and 1x Blue plus is also nice and white.

 

[Goubli]

my biggest concern would be lack of par w 2 actinics. How about all coral plus?

Or two blue plus and two tropics?

 

[piranhaman00]

I love the aquablue special bulb, I run 8 of them.

 

[jda]

What does PAR matter? PAR meter only measures visible spectrum and the actinics put out plenty of energy that a PAR meter cannot measure... kinda like measuring horsepower of a car while testing on ice. Actinic bulbs put out waves that are higher in energy too - the lower the nanometers, the more energy.

Just because a so-so tool cannot measure it does not mean that an actinic bulb is not delivering awesome things to the coral.

 

[Widdlyscudds]

I'm running a 3 bulb setup with 2 blue plus and 1 pure par bulb, definitely on the blue side of things but white enough to see my fish clearly. I have extensive experience using t5's for indoor gardening purposes and if you are strictly interested in growth I would recommend 2 pure par, 1 6400/6500, and 1 10k. the pure par bulbs are artificial purple so if you are more interested in getting the aesthetics from your t5's I would recomend buying a bunch of different agro max bulbs in different spectrums and playing around they are very inexpensive usually just a couple bucks each tho some run around 10 dollars. they have everything from UV bulbs to 3k to 10k to HEAVY red bulbs. sometimes mixing a red and blue will give off a better "white" color than just going with say a 6500 but it depends on a lot of different factors.

 

[piranhaman00]

What does PAR matter? PAR meter only measures visible spectrum and the actinics put out plenty of energy that a PAR meter cannot measure... kinda like measuring horsepower of a car while testing on ice. Actinic bulbs put out waves that are higher in energy too - the lower the nanometers, the more energy.

Just because a so-so tool cannot measure it does not mean that an actinic bulb is not delivering awesome things to the coral.

Actinic is actually mostly above 400nm which PAR meters detect

 

[Goubli]

The agromax purepar and such do not come in 60” sizes.

The aquablue special spectrum looks pretty good, but way more blue than the tropics tubes.

Maybe two tropics, a blue plus and an actinic?

Do you have an accurate pic of your tropics/actinic combo?

I saw a pic that looked nice w 1:1 tropics and blue plus

 

[Goubli]

Well, I ordered Giesemann topics, super actinic and ATI blue + bulbs. Will try the tropics with blue + first.
I also saw that they are discontinuing the Giesemann tropics bulbs and I don't see the GE versions in 60", so I got enough bulbs for 2 years. Not sure what I will do after that.

 

[oreo54]

Well, I ordered Giesemann topics, super actinic and ATI blue + bulbs. Will try the tropics with blue + first.
I also saw that they are discontinuing the Giesemann tropics bulbs and I don't see the GE versions in 60", so I got enough bulbs for 2 years. Not sure what I will do after that.

Sorry I'm a bit late. Anyways there is this:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WHuol0uRn2W7Jk-rxYWmtNgUF-lkY_VlUpAiNsMwME4/pub

Giesemann/ATI T5 lamp comparison - pics, PAR, and a whole mess of data

(For viewing this document as a single post, please click here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WHuol0uRn2W7Jk-rxYWmtNgUF-lkY_VlUpAiNsMwME4/pub )So I am relatively new to the T5 scene. I’m more an LED guy myself, but the same principles apply (it’s all physics anyway). My first T5 added were ...

www.nano-reef.com

Just for reference I guess..

 

[jda]

I don't think that I have ever seen a 60" general purpose bulb. The older T5s and the ones that are getting put back in now are all 48" that I can tell. There might be some, but I don't know...