Odyssea quad t5 ho planted with timer

[nnoah_won]

Hey guys and gals,

Thinking about getting the odyssea quad t5 planted timer. I was wondering what you guys are thinking of it. It is the one with the timer and the fans. My other question: are the fans loud because I am setting this up next to my bed.

Thanks

 

[Coyne]

I had one of these and I could not hear the fans. They were so quiet that I couldn't actually tell you if they were even working or not.
Also, one of the ballast sets stopped working after a few months. So my Quad became a Dual.

 

[nnoah_won]

1. Would you recommend it?

2. How well does it grow high light plants and carpeting plants?

3. What co2 do you have going with it?

 

[Brian_Nano12g]

What size tank and are you choosing Odyssea due to budget constraints? Are you going to run pressurized CO2?

 

[nnoah_won]

29 gallon

No, not due to budget

Yes I am going to run pressurized co2

 

[clarkm]

I had it and the whole thing quit after 5 months. Switched to the led finnex planted plus and couldn't be happier.

 

[Coyne]

1. Would you recommend it?

2. How well does it grow high light plants and carpeting plants?

3. What co2 do you have going with it?

1) Because it broke down on me so quickly, I would not recommend it.

2) At the time it was on top of a 24" deep tank. I couldn't say for sure, but knowing a little more than I did then I do not think that it delivered enough PAR for carpeting plants on that particular aquarium.

3) I was using liquid carbon at the time.

If budget isn't a huge concern, then I would recommend spending more on something that will work better and last longer. I thought I was being money smart when I bought mine, and now it's sitting unused and half-broken in a closet. So really it ended up being a waste of money.

 

[Brian_Nano12g]

Having fans running next to me in the bedroom doesn't sound too appealing.

Check out buildmyLED.com and Ecoxotic E-Series. If you go with BML, get the optional dimmer. No fans, less heat produced, dimmable, and pretty good to great PAR output.

 

[foster53]

Save your money. Those fixtures are JUNK. I bought several of them for my propagation tanks. Within a few weeks the bulbs went way off spectrum. Within 1 yr. all the ballasts had been replaced(at$25 a pop). I finally trashed canned all of them, and bought some lights from Jim, at Catalina Aquarium. They seem to be good lights so far. Good bulb spectrum, and decent ballasts.
To be perfectly blunt, I can't say enough bad things about the Odyssea junk.

 

[Mebbid]

I got one more bad thing to say about odyssea, they developed a reputation for catching on fire 0.o

 

[nnoah_won]

What do you guys suggest. Would two finnex planted plus work?

 

[Mebbid]

2 planted + would probably be a bit too much for a 29g. I would probably go with a Finnex ray 2

 

[nnoah_won]

The thing is though that my brother has the same exact specs for the tank and one finnex ray2. It can't really grow medium plants well. Can I get one planted plus and one ray2

 

[Mebbid]

The thing is though that my brother has the same exact specs for the tank and one finnex ray2. It can't really grow medium plants well. Can I get one planted plus and one ray2

Well, what does he add to the aquarium as far as fertilizers and carbon go? A ray 2 and planted plus would he away too much light.

 

[nnoah_won]

For fertilizers he uses Seachem flourish, API leaf zone, and API co2 booster.

 

[Mebbid]

For fertilizers he uses Seachem flourish, API leaf zone, and API co2 booster.

That's very likely the reason why. You can throw all the light in the world at a plant and it won't grow unless there's adequate fertilizers in the water. The flourish is really only good for a low light tank. As soon as you move higher then you really should look into dosing dry ferts in either an estimative index or pps pro method.

 

[Dallascowboys16]

I got one more bad thing to say about odyssea, they developed a reputation for catching on fire 0.o

Well that just really concerned me… Ive had my fixture for 2 years over my high-tech 55 gallon and haven't had a single problem, Ive had great plant growth with the coralife t-5 ho tubes. Im looking to upgrade my lighting soon as I'm going to upgrade to either a 75 gallon or 125 in around 6months- a year and I'm not sure wether to go aquatic life t-5 ho or BML.

 

[Mebbid]

Well that just really concerned me… Ive had my fixture for 2 years over my high-tech 55 gallon and haven't had a single problem, Ive had great plant growth with the coralife t-5 ho tubes. Im looking to upgrade my lighting soon as I'm going to upgrade to either a 75 gallon or 125 in around 6months- a year and I'm not sure wether to go aquatic life t-5 ho or BML.

If you can afford the bml is go with that in a heart beat. I use quad aquatic life t5ho and that's a great fixture as well.

Odyssea supposedly fixed their fire issues but who can tell since its a pretty low quality fixture.

 

[Dallascowboys16]

If you can afford the bml is go with that in a heart beat. I use quad aquatic life t5ho and that's a great fixture as well.

Odyssea supposedly fixed their fire issues but who can tell since its a pretty low quality fixture.

Yeah, thats what I thought, If i go 125 though I can't pay for a $500 fixture. I can if I get a 75 because its $280 then. If i go 125 ill have to go for a dual t-5 ho aquatic life fixture, Im just not sure if Ill get good enough light coverage from either of the fixtures on a wider tank. what do you guys think?

 

[bud29]

For what it's worth, I've had 4 Odyssea fixtures and have not had any issues. Sure, they are lower quality than other brands, but they are also considerably cheaper.

Here's a popular PAR graph for T5HO fixtures, made by Hoppy over on TPT.



Now, the Odyssea reading does seem high. However, if we go by this graph, the quad bulb aquaticlife T5HO has roughly 60% greater PAR at 15" than the odyssea dual bulb fixture. However, compare the prices between the two.

Odyssea T5 Aquarium Lighting

AquaticLife 36" T5 HO 4 Lamp Fixture with Lunar Lights Four Lamp

If my calculations are correct, that's a price increase of 543%, with a par increase of only 60%. This is why I usually go with odyssea.