Lighting

I elected to go with T5 lighting for my reef tank. The low profile of this lighting system allowed me to retro fit the system into my enclosed hood and a couple of fans are all I need for cooling. Also I felt that T5 would be more economical in the long run, more on this before too long. Finally I felt that I would be able to grow anything including SPS with this type of setup. All of my equipment for lighting was purchased at reefgeek.com they were great guys to deal with.

Having a 6 foot tank and the fact that the longest T5 bulb made at the times was only 5’ presented a question on how to mount the bulbs. I decided on 8 bulbs staggered across the hood with the ends being about 6” from the side of the tank. I was hoping this would provide the best and most uniform coverage of the tank. One of the nice features of the T5 bulbs is that they have individual reflectors that clip to the bulbs that really focus the light. I went with Sunlight Supply Parabolic Reflectors because of there small width of 2” allowed me to fit 8 bulbs in the area I had to work with. I know that these are not the “best” reflectors, but based upon my readings with the WAMAS club PAR meter this is not a big issue.

As time went on I decided to change out one of the T5 bulbs with a VHO actinic bulb. This change was simple as the width of the VHO bulb was approximately the same as one of the T5 bulbs with the Parabolic reflector. I'm extremely happy with the change. The corals now have more pop to them. I would recommend anyone thinking about it that VHO actinics (especially URI's) are better in terms of coral color than T5 actinics.

The bulbs are set into 3 banks of light that are all powered by ICE Cap ballasts. According to ICE Cap these ballasts “overdrive” the lights pushing more wattage, ~100W in an 80W bulb, thru the bulbs and making them brighter. I have actually verified this (more on this later as well).

In the two years I've had the tank setup. I've only replaced the light bulbs once, and I've played around with variations of the bulbs to get to the lighting setup I have now and it has colors that I really like. First I switched out one of the T5 actinics for a URI VHO actinic. Then when I replaced the bulbs I went with GE's rather than the Giesemann daylights and it was way too much light. So I replaced one of the GE's with an aqualblue plus and to make up some of the lost PAR I replaced the T5 ture actinic 03 with a Actinic Plus. I have my own PAR meter now and am doing measurements to check the longevity of my bulbs, but it seems like 1 year plus they are ok

From front to back my lighting looks like this from front to back:

Bulb	Ballast
T5 Giesemann 11000K Aquablue Plus 80W	IceCAP 660 Main Bank 1
T5 Giesemann Actinic Plus 80W	IceCAP 660 Main Bank 2
T5 Giesemann 11000K Aquablue Plus 80W	IceCAP 660 Main Bank 1
T5 Giesemann Actinic Plus 80W	IceCAP 660 Main Bank 1
URI 160W Super Actinic Blue	IceCAP 430 Actinic Lights
GE 6500K daylight 80W	IceCAP 660 Main Bank 2
T5 Giesemann 11000K Aquablue Plus 80W	IceCAP 660 Main Bank 2
T5 Giesemann Actinic Plus 80W	IceCAP 430 Actinic Lights

The Aquacontroler III has the ability to mimic sun cycles, so what I did was look up the great barrier reefs longitude and lattiute and then used this information to determine the sunrise and sunset times for the great barrier reef by using the US Naval Observatory's' website. I used a little before and a little after civil twilight for my actinics on, and then adjusted the cycle so the actinics would be on in the AM before I go to work. This is programmed into my AC III so that my lights come on like this: (for todays sunrise/sunset see the top of the left hand side menu)

Sunrise	Actinic Bank Lights On
Sunrise + 90 mins	Main Bank One Lights On
Sunrise + 240 mins	Main Bank Two Lights On
Sunset - 240 mins	Main Bank Two Lights Off
Sunset - 90 mins	Main Bank One Lights Off
Sunset	Actinic Bank Lights Off

This gives a sunrise/sunset simulation with the actinic bank, and a building light through the day and decreasing through the evening and my corals have responded very well to this. The actinics are on on average over the year about 12.5 hours, longer in the winter, and shorter in the summer.