after.careful.consideration... and your advice.

[jdavid]

I don't think any bulbs are good for 3 years

 

[mikesmith34]

Kourtney it sounds like you have done an incredible amount of homework on yor DIY lighting. Hope it works for ya. Good luck

 

[cosigner]

You are absolutely correct about over-driving T8's... However, using so many short bulbs opposed to a few long ones seems extremely ineffecient and I'm sure you'll quickly notice so on your power bill.

T8's are a thing of the past in reefing because of size, and don't quote me on this, but I'm sure that the ballast are less efficient when comparing Watts to Watts and PAR values. I'm confident that even if a 100W T8 gave off the same PAR as a 100W T5, the ballast would use a lot more energy doing so.

Good luck with your build.

 

[kstyle13]

The beauty of the ballasts are that when you take a 4 light ballast and you plug one light onto all four sockets the ballast actually runs cooler than it would if you were running 4 lights. This is due to the light only increasing by .7 with every new circuit. The wattage and the color temp are not changed. However yes a few long bulbs would be better than many story ones. But I am wanting to run a sunrise/sunset setting so by running many smaller bulbs I can achieve this effect. Also it allows me to concentrate light into areas that I want it. The way I am setting up the live rock it will unnecessary to have light spread out all across the tank when I am creating a few large shelves within my reef. So I want to add more smaller bulbs to light the areas I want. Smile to placing a spotlight on someone. However the lights will light up the entire tank. Just more so in the areas I want it.... I know without pictures of what I'm doing that seems all over the place but hopefully I will have it set up soon.

 

[cbj25]

just curious about the title of the thread "after.careful.consideration... and your advice." where did you get said advice. Because all I see is people advising you that this might not be the best way to grow coral. IME they are correct, but I hope you prove us wrong...