Opinions onT5

[supermazz9]

Shopping around for lights today, and I was introduced to the Coralife T5 Double Strip. I'm pretty new to this, and I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking at here. Seems fairly inexpensive, and decent quality, but I'm not sure what I'm comparing it to, anyway, so what I think really isn't worth poop.

Anyone out here have any opinions on these? I've got a 29g, and I'm looking for midish lighting, and I reckon this should do.

 

[Hara]

I bought T-5's for my planted tank last December, I really like them.

 

[ringfinger]

I really liked the 30" Coralife T-5 fixture on my 20g long when it was up and running. I don't know if you would be in the "midish" light level on a 29g with the same fixture, but it would provide some good low lighting.

 

[Glenc]

I have a 24" coralife double T-5 on my 20 gallon high. I really like it, it is a bright, powerfull fixture. I run another homemade double T-6 fixture with it, but it is pretty good on it's own. My plants still pearl even with the T-5 fixture on by itself.

 

[supermazz9]

what kind of output would this light be considered? for some reason I've got 60 watts in my head, but I don't know where I got that number from.

How many watts is this light? From what I understand, aren't the lights rated at 18watts? If so, what kind of standard wattage does this compare to?

 

[Purrbox]

Check out Wizard~Of~Ozz's thread on Lighting. Part way down the page you'll see that he mentions that CF and T5 are vertually the same in terms of output. T5's are probably slightly more efficient since they wouldn't have as many restrike issues as CF do. If you check out the page he's written (there's a link in that thread) there's a calculator that will help you to determine how much light of various types you would want to achieve various lighting levels.

 

[jerman]

T5HO

I do corals reefs and planted tanks. And the salt guys equate T5HO to metal halide bulbs without the extra heat and electricity. On some salt forums people say they have tested the output and find them within 10% of metal halide. I only have T5 regulars on my planted tank and metal halide on my reef. The T5 regular seems to be the same as compact flouresants. The T5HO that I have seen in LFS do look pretty close in output to metal halide, without the shimmering effect.

 

[Toirtis]

I have several Corallife aqualight double T5s running on FW planted tanks and could not be happier with them.