Switch to T5?

Currenty for my planted (newly dirted) I have a coralife PC ligh fixture with 2 6700K bulbs and 2 10000k bulbs. All bulbs are of need of being replaced been going strong for almost 2 years now.

But after reading all this T5 HO business it has me wondering if I should just get one of these fixtures rather than spending 100 dollars worth of new PC bulbs.

Any suggestions, tips or hints?

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Permalink Reply by Greg on July 21, 2011 at 11:36am

Interesting. Never heard that one before.

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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Bingamon on July 21, 2011 at 12:07pm

White would work. I'm not sure if I would choose flat white though. Looking at light as what it is and how paints are made I don't think I'd do flat. Light is made up of visual and non visual wavelengths. It's not until a non visual wave hits an object and changes it's frequency that our eyes can see it. So when red waves reflect we see red and blue is blue and when they mix we see purple so on and so fourth. Black and white are special. It takes all the color waves to make black. Which is why black items tend to become hotter then any other colors because it absorbes everything. White on the other hand reflects everything. It's the absence of color. Now with paints flat paints are made to absorb most of all visible lights so that it has a flat aperance semi gloss reflect half and full gloss almost everything. So if ur running flat white you will reflect all those lost color waves that are great for plants but you should in theory Loose some visible brightness to the tank itself.

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Permalink Reply by Greg on July 21, 2011 at 12:26pm

My only problem would be paint chips falling into my tank after some time. That us if you have an open tank like I do.

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Permalink Reply by 2apes2gp667wr on July 21, 2011 at 1:49pm

I agree with mostly all of that. The light we are dealing with is only made up of the visual part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Non-visual wavelengths are not "light" per se, they are other types of radiation like radio waves, infrared, x-ray etc. These waves are not used by plants in photosynthesis. It is the waves of certain lengths that are reflected off an object that give us color. E.G. an apple reflects a certain part of the wave so we see an apple as red when the wave bounces off it and hits our eye. All other parts of the wave are absorbed by the object. Therefore white will reflect the entire wavelength. I think the loss of brightness is because the aluminum reflector will have a more direct effect while the white paint will disperse the light more evenly making it appear dimmer. Use spray paint and you won't get paint chips falling off. Oh hell I don't work for NASA, just get the reflector. LOL. Good discussion though.