Lighting options for my 80 gallon

C

ChaoticByDesign

Ok guys, I'm trying to do my research for lighting for the 80 gallon I won at Next Wave. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's 24" long, 24" tall and 30" inches deep.

I'd prefer to go with T5s since I've heard such good things about them. Because of the depth of the tank, I know I'm going to need 6-8 bulbs to get adequate front to back coverage. And because of the length, I need 24" bulbs, which are 24 watts.

So lets say I go with 8 bulbs at 24 watts each, which works out to 192 total watts of lighting. I definitely see the energy savings here over the single 400 watt halide that is my alternative. However, are 24 watt bulbs, even eight of them, going to give me enough light intensity to penetrate to the bottom of the tank and allow me to keep SPS, clams and/or anemones?

And, do I need to overdrive them? I've heard of overdriving bulbs, but I've never done it. If overdriving them is necessary, how do I do that?

I know these are kind of rookie questions, but I want to do this right.
 
I would suggest going with MH, and a 250w one, that will still use less energy. Metal halide will meet all of your lighting needs for corals, clams, etc, at probably a better overall cost, considering ballasts, endcaps, bulb replacements. Does the tank have a canopy and are you determined to use it?
Catherine
 
I'd prefer to not use a canopy, but I don't have a choice. Because of where the tank will be located in my living room, I have to use a canopy or anyone sitting near the tank will be blinded if they look up into the lights. However, my husband is going to build the canopy for the tank, so we'd be putting multiple fans and vents in the canopy to help dissipate the heat.

Any reason for recommending the 250 MH over the 400 beyond just the energy savings? I had a 175 gallon at one point and we had to use 400 watt MH bulbs to get good penetration to the bottom of the tank. This 80 gallon is only a couple inches shallower than the 175 was, which was why I was thinking the 400 watts.
 
My 140 g is also a Deep Sea Aquatics tank, 29" deep, and I have 2x 250w in mine. My clams are really happy (growing like pigs) on the sandbed, so I can tell you that it penetrates really well to the bottom. I built my own suspension for pendants, and the lights are about 8" off the surface. Even at the height of the lights, they do not shine into our eyes, the pendants direct the light straight down into the tank, with little or no light wash outside the tank.
Catherine
 
Much depends on the reflector you will use. If you use a lumenarc or similar reflector, 250W will probably suffice. If I won the tank, I'd probably put a 250W MH with a lumenarc reflector, two 24" T5s for actinics.
 
However said:
The question is very broad so I will attempt address you question as best I can.
There is a lot more to keeping the animals you have in mind besides lighting. In order to get the most out of your T5 lighting you will need to make sure you tank husbandry skills will provide the water clarity needed for T5 light penetration.

Make sure that each bulb has it's own highly polished, parabolic reflector.

Use a quality ballast designed to drive T5s. Icecap ballasts are great, but they overdrive the bulb which will result in more heat being generated. Some say that overdriving will shorten the life of the bulbs as well. I can't speak to that as I have no experience with overdriving.

The distance the bulbs are from the surface of the water will also play a role. Every tank is different and you will find that different specimens will react to the depth at wich they are placed in the tank. The amount of useable light at different depths will determine when certain animals are placed. If you place the lights close to the surface of the water you can keep things a little further down in the tank. When the lights are higher off the surface you will not have as much useable light at the bottom of the tank.

I ran (6) 36" T5s off of Current ballasts with Icecap premium reflectors on my 36x24x24 tank. It was plenty of light. IMHO 8 T5s would be enough for most animals out there. You may not be able to place certain animals where you want but that is the a small compromise for all the rest of the positives you get.

I hope that makes sense. Good luck!
Click to expand...
 
if this was my tank i would go one 250 watt reflector either lumenarc or lumenax elite. lumenbrite would work but would give you too much shadows on the edges.

i used a lumenarc mini on my old 60 cube 24x24x24 here is a build thread i had when i started it up

http://www.dfwmas.org/Forums/viewtopic.php?t=31359&highlight=cube+build

the thing with t5 on your tank like you said you will need to overdrive them, so that will be two icecap ballasts you will need to actively cool them to to get the most out of the t5's. plus in my opinion 24" t5's are really inefficient of the t5's compared to 36" t5's

if it was my tank i would go (1) 250 watt with good reflector lumenax or lumenarc with an good bulb with alot of par. I love the aquamaxx 14k in my opinion it is stronger than reeflux 12k and puts alot of coral to your corals. my current tank is 31' hight an i run them on a lumenbrite reflector and i get great growth and color on stuff on the bottom. Plus i have 3 clams near bottom 1/3 of my tank that are doing awesome.

you are more than welcome to come by and take a look at the coloring of the bulbs.

for ballasts i would go 250 watt icecap ballasts as they are true to their wattage and do not overdrive the bulbs and color on the aquamaxx bulbs are awesome.


if you decide to go t5 here is a great resource on t5's

http://tfivetesting.googlepages.com/
 
If you are decided on a canopy, then I would recommend T-5 for a number of reasons. Heat and energy consumption, along with the color alternatives and variations. The MH is also a little more harsh from a viewing perspective if you are seating near it. The T-5s will be more user friendly in a living room and from what I recall of that tank, it sits rather high so if you are on a couch or chair near it, you're going to get some direct/indirect glare from the lighting.

Since your hubby is building the canopy, I assume he is handy with tools. You can get retro kits or pre-wired retros and ballasts here.

Pre-wired with ballast and bulbs... you pick the bulb configuration you want.

http://tinyurl.com/d963h8

It will be a bit cheaper if you go non-wired and do it yourself but with the above, all you'll need to do is anchor it to the canopy and you are good to go.

I'd recommend you start with the 4 bulb configuration and then alter it as you need based on your livestock. The 4 bulb will handle just about everything in that tank, but if you decide later to go with more SPS you can easily add another 2 bulbs or another 4 bulb kit simply by taking the canopy off and screwing them in different places.

I never recommend single MH simply due to the fact that you have no control over fine tuning of the color. You could do a combo MH and wire in a couple of T-5s for supplementation, but that would cost about the same as going full T-5.
 
I'm no expert but have read a lot of expert's recommendations.

T5 - two Icecap 24" 4 bulb prewired retro kits with two 660-009 ballasts. The Icecap reflectors are included and snap right onto the bulbs. The kits are 10" wide each. I'd make the canopy and space the two retro kit plates an inch or so apart and put a row of LED moonlights down the center and across the back. You can also have some white/blue LEDs in there to remain on durning the day to get your shimmer effect.

These ballasts would overdrive the bulbs making a 24watt bulb in essence a 48watt(?) bulb. Somebody check me on that exact figure please. So you'd have plenty of penetration to the sandbed of that tank.

You would HAVE to actively cool the lamps to get the full performance and life from the bulbs. Use something like the AZOO two fan unit to blow from the rear over the endcaps on the label end (cool spot) of the lamps. Expect to replace bulbs after 8-9 months.

Another great thing about T5 is you can change out single bulbs to dial in a customized color. The ATI, UVL, Geismann, KZ... bulbs are pretty good at this time.
 
Thanks again, everyone. It will be awhile before we can purchase the lighting, but I wanted to start asking questions and doing research ahead of time. I'll definitely take everyone's suggestions into consideration. :)

@rckrzy1 wrote:
Since you got the tank at such a good price why not splurge and get a solaris LED ? said:
:lol: One day I might be able to afford that kind of lighting for an aquarium, but not right now. I don't know much about the Solaris, but the idea of a complete LED system is pretty cool. Anyone ever kept SPS/clams/anemones under LEDs like that?
Click to expand...
 
On second thought, after looking into the Solaris systems a little more, I might be willing to delay the tank build a little longer so I can save up and get one. Those are REALLY cool. My question about keeping the SPS and such still stands though.
 
@ChaoticByDesign wrote:
On second thought said:
The par is just as good as Halides and the light is very directional, does not leave the tank and light up a room like Halides.

But the price is the stopper. But with reduced operating and cost and lifespan it might help in the long run.
Click to expand...
 
@rckrzy1 wrote:
The par is just as good as Halides and the light is very directional said:
I'm sold. In the end, the price may prove to be an obstacle we can't overcome, but after looking at the website and talking to my husband, the Solaris system is something we're SERIOUSLY considering. Like you said, the reduced operating costs and lifespan could well make it worth the money.
Click to expand...
 
@ChaoticByDesign wrote:
[I]@rckrzy1 wrote:[/I][quote="The par is just as good as Halides and the light is very directional said:
I'm sold. In the end, the price may prove to be an obstacle we can't overcome, but after looking at the website and talking to my husband, the Solaris system is something we're SERIOUSLY considering. Like you said, the reduced operating costs and lifespan could well make it worth the money."]

The club has a good relationship with Solaris. I don't know whom has the best price or if we could get a deal or not. I would shop around for sure.
Click to expand...
 
I'm running 24W T5 HO on my tanks. My newest tank is only 16" deep but I have 8x24W over it. The lights hang 7" above the water line. It's a SPS dominated tank and everything is doing really well and holding their colors. I don't have any clams though. Oops forgot, they all have individual parabolic reflectors, not the "molded" or bent around the bulb type reflector that comes with some lower price lights.
 
@DaveG99 wrote:
Is this tank set up yet? Any updates? Its been 6 months! said:
I'm embarassed to say that it's still sitting empty right now. :oops: We've been going through some financial difficulties and our saltwater hobby has unfortunately taken a backseat. :sad:
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top