TEK doesn't get much love in saltwater, those fixtures lack fans which reduces the lifespan of the fixture greatly. Also the ATI reflectors are really that much better.
4 bulb ATI sunpower, dim or no dim your choice, is one piece of space age hardware and will last you for a long time and holds it value well. :smile:
the sleek silver metallic finish also will match your ADA tank.
get the TEK 6-bulb...it gives you the option of having either low-light (2-bulbs) or high-light(4-bulbs/6-bulbs) in combination with the height you want to place the fixture at
4 bulbs is more than enough, or of course, you can go w/ the finnex which will work great, check the par ratings on their site, you want to be around 20-30 for lower/mid light, 30-50 for med.high and anything over 50 umols of par will be high light
A correction on my part, I was talking about the bulbs not per say the fixture.
Taken from the Reef Central topic on T5 Lighting:
There actually is sound evidence that not cooling T5's will kill output and life.
With no fan and the shield you will lose about 50% of your PAR.
With no shield and no fan you will lose about 20% of what you could be getting.
With the fan and no shield you will gain about 20%.
T5's not being cooled have been shown to last right around the 6-8 month mark. Unless you have a spectrometer you won't visually notice the spectrum shift but it happens. Put a new Blue Plus next to a 6 month old bulb, you will see the difference.
Properly cooled T5's keep about 90% of their PAR for the first 7-8 months. By the 12 month mark they will lose about 25% of their original PAR. Also by the 12 month mark most of your blue and actinic phosphors are shot. You could extend the daylight bulbs a little longer but you are asking for algae problems in my opinion with the shift of spectrum towards the yellow and red side of things.
I have TEK 6 bulb over my 120-P.
Another good choice in comparable price range is CoralVue, it comes with a lot of goodies that are extras on the TEK. I have one with 6 bulbs over 40B and could not be happier.
The idea being: it's easier to make less from more then more from less.
Probably not a great choice. You typically want to stay away from fixtures like that. Key with led lights are the one they type of LED bulb (brand/wattage), two the cooling. Typically the best brand of LED is cree, top end fixtures will use 3-5w cree bulbs with a decent heatsink and active cooling (or a large heatsink with passive cooling). The lower end fixtures will use bridgelux 3w led bulbs. That fixture uses bulbs driven at .1w a piece. Save your money and get something else.
The Finnex grows plants fine in my sig plus dozens of other tanks on this forum. PAR is PAR and the Finnex LEDs are well represented there.
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