platy ben

Hello
As some of you know I have been looking into buying a T5 ficture and mine came today

I've put it on my angel tank and I'm happy with it, but just thought I would write up some pros and cons of what I've found so far

Pros!
Very easy to fit on tank
Comes with 2 bulbs, one actinic and one white
Comes with total of 78W
Looks very stylish if on the right colour tank (not mine lol)

Cons!
Very weak plastic supports (I broke a piece already thankfully its only minor)

And a couple of personal cons for my tank!
The angelfish so far, don't like it, they've been pooping themself in a huddle since I put it on (15 minutes ago), they will get used to it
It looks a bit silly on my tank! lol, my tank is wood colour, the fixture is silver.

I will post pics later once I've gotten used to it and once the angels settle down

Just a question, I've been told that the actinic bulb won't help my plants what so ever, does this mean my watt per gallon, for plants, is only 39W? or does it still count as 78W?

Thanks,
Ben

rileyrk190

i dont know a lot about lights, but i do believe the actinic bulb will still help. Your plants just wont become more colorful like corals. I believe all plants can still use the light though. Hopefully someone else will be able to help you better.

platy ben

The angels have settled down now and are back to their normal selves The actinic bulb makes my double dark angel look like it has blue fins

Heres some pics
Picture 1 and 2, before and after pics, I also put some more plants in so you can see that in the pics too
Picture 3, bit closer pic of the tank
Picture 4, "Errrm.....anybody seen a 1700G pond" lol, this is a lot of snow for where I live in the UK

Attached Images

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mathas

Some actinic bulbs can provide marginal benefit for freshwater plants, but even the ones that do are (in my opinion) easily surpassed by bulbs with a more complete spectrum than just one specific wavelength of blue light. See my comments in Cich-Oh's thread here for details.

If this is the same fixture you provided an eBay link to in your earlier thread, that company has virtually no useful information on their website about which type of actinic bulb you have, so I can't say whether your particular actinic bulb is completely useless or only less-than-ideal.

This is yet another circumstance where the WPG metric falls short. If you start trying to compartmentalize your lighting into what's useful for plants and what isn't, relying strictly on fixture wattage isn't an accurate method of doing so, you'd want to measure PAR. Not only that, but with the fixture elevated above the tank, your lighting is slightly less intense than it would be without the legs installed, so even if all 78W of your lighting "counted", it wouldn't be an apples-to-apples comparison with tanks where the fixture is resting on the rim of the tank.

I really wouldn't worry much about WPG. If you're happy with the way the tank looks, keep the actinic bulb for now. If you notice plant growth problems that you suspect are light-related, replace the actinic bulb with something more ideal for freshwater plants.

platy ben

Well I only want low light plants anyway so I guess my white bulb will suffice for them anyway

Here is a link to the bulb I have
http://www.chlighting.com/en/pro.asp...h=&categoryid=
Hope that helps

Thanks for the great info mathas

platy ben

Just thought of some more Pros!

The fixture can easily be slid back and forth along the top of the tank making it easy to get in to do tank maintainence without having to remove the fixture.
The light section of the fixture can be lifted to an angle to make tank maintainence even easier
The fixture holds the light quite a distance above the water, so a lot less cleaning condensation and water from popping bubbles off of the lights

EDIT: Ooops, double post Moderator, help! lol