I'm going to way in on this one. Keep in mind these are JMHO from my trials and error's.
Jack is correct about the heat issue. A watt is a watt. I've had MH and now have T5's. They are two totally different types of lights. My T5's do get hot and do heat up my fish room, just like my MH did. I have 8-80w T5's compared to the 2-250 MH's that I had. I switch for 2 reasons:
In hope's to save on my power bill as T5's don't pull as much. Not saying they don't use there fair share, But how many MH's would I need to get what I have out of these T5's??
Second reason is that the light from the sun is not 10k, 14k, 20, 65k and so on. It's not just one of these Kelvin, It's all of them and more. With MH's I'd be force with maybe 3 different bulbs and then have to supplement with something else. VHO's or something. I have 8 bulbs of T5, I can have 8 different specs if I chose to. I would love to place 2 MH's on my tank with the T5's just to get the shimmering effect back and to see how it looks.
IJMHO that my corals are growing faster with the new T5's than with the MH's. However I haven't been running the T5's full on everyday. I shut them down for 2 days and then run them for only 6 hours the rest of the week. If not there trying to bleach out my corals. But I've watch my Frogspawn go from a Golfball to larger than a softball in about 2-3 weeks time, as well as my Monti cup's booming in grow and shoorms and even my 2 clams. Everything in my tank is growing. It all grew with MH's too, but not quite as fast. I like both sources of light.
Stupid.
P.S. Derrick, anytime you want to stop by and see the light's you know your more than welcome.
