help me light my cube

speedstar

New member
I have a 50 x 50 x 24 cube tank. it will be an sps tank. I've been looking into T5 lighting. I am wondering how many 54w 48inch bulbs I should use for this and if there would be a considerable savings over using 2 400w MH in luminarcs. thanks for any input. I currently have 5 of the cheaper T5HO ballasts that run two bulbs each should these be scraped and replace with icecaps to overdrive them the bulbs or will they be ok to use and just buy a few more. thanks again.
 
Why not a single 400W MH and t-5's on the edges? That would be a sweet lighting system...If they made 18" t-5's I'd do that for my 30 cube. As it is, I have to go HQI/pc to light and do dawn/dusk.

A 400W radium with 8 t-5's would be the [profanity] ....4- 48" and 4- 36"(for the sides). Mix and match the t-5's to get the color you want.
 
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I have a 40"x40"x20" cube. I use a canopy, which is divided into three sections. Each section contains four 36" 39 watt T5 Ice Cap SLR reflectors. The amount of light is excellent, IMO. The beauty of T5's over a cube, IMO is that there are no "dark areas" like you might get with halide pendants, if you arrange the reflectors carefully. You can get full coverage.

I did consider a setup like joedirt recommends...It would be awesome! However, in the end, I decided that all T5 was the best way to go. My canopy was designed for T5's, and is too short to accomodate a halide pendant.

Hope this helps.

Scott
 
If you want all T5s, you would want to have about 16 bulbs at a minimum for a LPS/softy tank, 20 would be more the ideal though.

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Here is a tank similar to the dimensions you list ^^^ at 317gallons. http://www.miniriff.de/Szczyra/szczyra.html

But personally, with a tank of that size, I think you can get away with alot less through the creative use of light movers for haldies/10,000Ks and blue T5s. If you did two 250wattDE halides with 10,000K bulbs, and decent reflectors (lumenarc DEs), you could put them on 3.5' light rails so they would move back and forth on the tank every 3 minutes or so. Even though these two lights would only be 500watts, their moving would give you better coverage, more natural light simulation (corals benefit from this greatly rather than a fixed, constant source), and double the effective coverage with those two halides. Then, use about 6 rows of T5s for 'filling' in the whole tank, both light/dark wise, and color wise. Three bulbs should be blue+, and three should be super actinics. This way, the moving halides will provide the 'peak' levels across the whole tank, but when they are not over a certain part, the blue and actinic bulbs will still be there to provide illumination for viewing, and supplimental growth/pigmentation.
If you want to suppliment with some daylight, you could make it 8 T5s, having a couple of them be aquablues or sun bulbs to make the whole tank less blue when the halides arent directly overhead. Either way, its a hard lighting setup to beat.
 
joedirt54,
I noticed in your current tanks you have an Oceanic 30 cube with a custom center overflow. Did you have the bottom drilled for this. I have a 30 Oceanic cube. I've always wondered if I could drill the bottom to have a center overflow. I thought the Oceanic bottoms were tempered glass and could not be drilled. How did you do it?
Thanks, Soxx
 
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