Do Individual Reflectors Matter For T5? Take a Look!

[Horace]

Well it has been said many times that individual reflectors on T5 bulbs makes a huge difference. Well here is proof that they REALLY DO make a very large difference indeed. Here are two of my SPS corals that were not very colorful at all before I changed my reflectors. Note that I am still useing the exact same bulbs. The corals were in my tank for aprox 3 months and looked exactly like the before pictures the whole time. The time between the before and after is ONLY THREE WEEKS! Unreal if you ask me. Im sure they will only get better over the next few weeks as well. Check it out:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

 

[horkn]

nice proof

 

[Ti]

Smoke and mirrors.
J/K

 

[Horace]

HEHE, not only did my corals notice, but it was actually a visible difference in brightness which is pretty amazing as well. If you can visually see a difference, the gain in PAR is substantial.

 

[MayoBoy]

I have a Finnex hood with a single reflector. I bought 4 TEK reflectors to redo the hood. I just stuck a reflector over each white bulb and took pictures. You couldn't see a huge difference in light but the shutter speed went from 1/8 second without reflectors to 1/30 with 2 reflectors.

 

[Horace]

If you see a visible difference, then the PAR went up substantially. Obviously your camera noticed the difference. Thats a pretty handy DIY way of telling the difference!

 

[Entropy]

The thing that caught my eye was your overflow wall. It went from black to purple in three weeks? That is some pretty radical coralline growth.

 

[Horace]

Crazy isnt it....That first picture was taken on Dec 12th.

 

[Entropy]

Did you glue a frag to your overflow?

 

[Horace]

yep

 

[CaptainDave]

Horace, what kind of reflectors did you add? I just ordered a couple of the IceCap reflectors from ReefGeek.

the change in your corals is pretty awesome.

 

[Horace]

They are Icecap reflectors....