A buddy of mine has a 72 gallon corner bowfront that he has had for about two and a half years. Like all of the corner aquariums, lighting them properly can be tricky. His is particularly difficult as this aquarium has a flat back making it rather long, skinny, and tall. There is not much room is place lights and yet it has to be bright enough to punch to the bottom of his aquarium.
What he had been using with some success was several T12-VHO lamps. He had two 3' 95 watt lamps in the front with two 2' 75 watt lamps in the back.
Last edited by Steven Pro; 03-11-2010 at 08:46 AM.
That worked moderately well, but he was looking to get even more light out of his system without spending a lot more money. I suggested changing his lighting system to T5-HO lamps because he already had the ballast for it, an IceCap 660, for his T12-VHO lamps.
The change was rather simple. The wiring is the same. All he needed was new endcaps, reflectors, and lamps. The endcaps would have to be repositioned, but otherwise it would be pretty straightforward.
Before we made the switch, we took a few readings. The daylight lamp in his T12-VHO setup was putting out 280 PAR at 6" from the sensor. The T12-VHO lamps all had internal reflectors.
By comparison, a comparable color temperature daylight T5-HO lamp with an external reflector was putting out 445 PAR!
This increase in intensity has allowed him to cut down the photoperiod too. He was running the T12-VHO lamps for 12 hours per day. Now, he plans to run the T5-HO lamps no more than 10 hours per day.
The T12-VHO lamps were consuming 340 watt (2x95 + 2x75) for 12 hours per day, or a daily consumption of 4,080 watt-hours.
The new T5-HO setup only uses 200 watts (the IceCap 660 overdrives the T5-HO lamps, the 3' lamps run at 60 watts and the 2' ones operate at 40 watts). This means he is going to use less than half the amount of electricity per day since these T5-HO lamps are only going 10 hours per day for a total of 2,000 watt-hours per day.
More light. Less electricity. Minimal cost. It was a no brainer.
Last edited by Steven Pro; 03-11-2010 at 01:13 PM.
Very clever conversion! Corner tanks are a challenge to light.... this really is a great solution.
Detroit's oldest large LED tank! Est'd Jan 2005, went LED June 2009. 6' wide 130g reef, Sunbrite T10 LED tubes (3xGen 3 and 1xGen 1), mostly SPS, but chalices, other LPS, and a few softies too. http://pjr-reef.blogspot.com/
Converting a T12-VHO setup to T5-HO
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