Wow, it's been a while since I made it over here to update the 'ol blog! A lot has happened in the last few months and I get a lot of PM's from different people asking about the 3000k bulb and how it is working out. Well to answer that, let me see if I can remember the order of events here...

1.  I pulled the 3000k bulb out of the mix when I noticed my blue colors shifting and not popping as much. For reasons that you'll read in a second, I don't think this had to do with the bulb itself.
2. I replaced the 3000k with an "Aquablue".
3. Since I had been playing with bulbs I left my end cap covers off, and a stray jet of water sprayed one of them down (not good, also a long story) which resulted in salt creep inside the contact area thus causing the 2 center bulbs of my 6-bulb setup to not turn on.
4. While all of this is going on I am taking care of a baby 2 days a week, and finally left my day job to pursue my own business for the remainder of the week (long nights and weekends). All of this amounts to not much energy to take care of the tank.
5. For almost 2  months my center bulbs were out and the color of most of my corals was noticeably looking better.
6. I didn't correlate it to the lights being out and finally got around to fixing the problem, and wouldn't you know it the color went right back to the pastel look. To be fair though I did lose a couple of corals that were on the bottom of my tank, not sure if this was related to less light.

That brings us to now, I have decided to intentionally disable the center 2 bulbs (out of 6 bulbs) and run this way for awhile. I'm also getting some coraline growth which I've never really had much of. The biggest problem for me right now is not having energy to take care of my tank. I have had the time but find myself doing other things (hmmm like blogging). Things have really gone down hill. I have given away and/or lost about half of my coral population. The larger corals in my tank are still thriving, but I'm considering switching over to a mostly softy system.

No decision to change... yet! Here is a growth sequence from one of my favorite corals, this was grown completely under T5. Lighting has been between 324 and 216w (depending on my laziness!).

07/2005 - Received and mounted pinky-finger size frag, brown, no branches.

(No picture)

09/2005

01/2006 

06/2006

01/2007 (about 10" around)

I don't run a calcium reactor, so that said you can be the judge of how well SPS can grow under T5.

Wha't I'm really excited about right now are the new T5 fixtures that are hitting the market. Since I have been using T5 I have seen the technology improve. I personally have the 'old school' SLS setup. It's important to keep in mind that not all T setup's are equal. The no-reflector setup's are not so hot, the single reflector setups are better, parabolic SLS reflectors are decent, Ice Cap reflectors are better yet, now throw an Ice Cap ballast on to overdrive the bulb output, and finally throw some cooling fans into the mix to drive the output even higher. One of the things I've said since my first post is that I felt the T5 technology over seas is a step ahead, and it appears that was true but we are catching up... I'm very much looking forward to Sanjay's test of the latest T5 technology.

That's all for now folks 

I am starting this blog as a means to post the results of my Apogee PAR meter and Ocean Optics spectrometer.  The results are intended to resolve some outstanding questions that remain in the lighting aspect of our reef aquariums.  Some tests that I hope to run are:

1. How do Icecap and EVC electronic ballasts effect the long-term output of a DE bulb?  Do they really make the bulb last longer, or is their lower power really damaging the bulb?

 2. Which lasts longer?  A SE bulb on a e-ballast or a DE bulb on a HQI ballast (250watts)?

 3. How to T5s stack up against halides?

4. How do the top T5 ballasts compare?  I will be comparing OSRAM, Sylvania, Vossloh-Schwabe, Universal Triad, Advance, and Icecap.  Sorry, Im not paying for dimmable ones, just the top end electronics.

5. Does the IC 660 ballast wear out T5 bulbs faster than spec ballasts, even if I use a laser pyrometer to match surface temps using fans (keeping both types of bulbs at 95degreesC)?

Right now, I have 3 40B Reef Tanks to play with for this.  Two are lit with 250wattDE halides, and one is lit with a 6x39wattT5 Tek light.  The Tek has been modified to have active cooling (more on that later) which greatly boosts the output of the fixture.  I run G-man bulbs at the moment, 2x aquablue, 2x actinic+, 2x true actinic 03s.  The look is nearly identical to a 14,000K pheonix, but with actinic... perhaps more like the EVC 20,000K.  I started using T5s because I wanted to light a frag tank which was underneath another tank... so a hot halide was out.  I thought I would try T5s, thinking they might be good enough... and boy, were they.  As of now, the T5s are giving me better results than my halides.

What I want to ask before I go any further is... are there any tests that you guys and gals would like to see done with regards to reef lighting?  Or, if there is another test that interests you, let me know.  My available tools are an Ocean Optics Spectrometer, an Apogee PAR meter, a Kill-A-Watt power meter, 2-20 cfh, 5-50 cfh, and 10-100 cfh Dwyer airflow meters, a laserpyrometer, and my own senses.  I am building a 'black box' for testing bulbs outside of the aquarium environment as well.

I am also in the process of designing my next custom reef tank, so progress on that will be included.

Stay tuned,

Jon