T5 bulb's secret sauce? Why are they the reefing "gold standard" and can LEDs compare? | BRStv Investigates

[tehmadreefer]

Well ATI credibility has taken a hit because they still recommend changing bulbs every 8 months. They haven't changed the website to help reefers save on money and environmental waste.

I don't know why you are arguing with me, BRS does all kinds of BRS recommendations. Why would a question asked a million times on R2R be do out of line? I value BRS recommendations, but I don't blindly follow them. More info from positive sources is better than getting a recommendation from someone I don't know on R2R.

8 months? I see 8-12 and brs recommends 12-14, soooo.

 

[Little_Red_Ryan_Hood]

8 months? I see 8-12 and brs recommends 12-14, soooo.

That could be a 6 month difference. That is a big difference.

I am done. You are not being friendly, or fair. I now know I shouldn't ask for a reasonable request.

I am sorry you are so miserable.

 

[Arthacker87]

BRS has such a great group of people. Appreciate the information. Just placed an order with yall!!

 

[tehmadreefer]

That could be a 6 month difference. That is a big difference.

I am done. You are not being friendly, or fair. I now know I shouldn't ask for a reasonable request.

I am sorry you are so miserable.

So debating the actual facts between a manufacturer and retailer is unfriendly and not fair?? Lol ok

FYI, I change my bulbs every 12-14 months based on brs’s RECOMMENDATION and experiment.

 

[Little_Red_Ryan_Hood]

So debating the actual facts between a manufacturer and retailer is unfriendly and not fair?? Lol ok

FYI, I change my bulbs every 12-14 months based on brs’s RECOMMENDATION and experiment.

You did not state any facts. You don't even see that a 6 months of extra bulb life is almost as much as the ATI recommend bulb life. That is a lot of saving. Sooo.

Be positive. People will respect you more.

 

[Leishman]

Love my @ATI North America t-5s

15 second video


Front to back
B+
AB Special
B+
Purple+
Coral+
B+
B+

 

[Little_Red_Ryan_Hood]

Sorry everyone, I just came here to have a nice discussion about T5 bulbs. I don't want to debate.

 

[Little_Red_Ryan_Hood]

Love my @ATI North America t-5s

15 second video


Front to back
B+
AB Special
B+
Purple+
Coral+
B+
B+

Thanks for the info.

 

[tehmadreefer]

You did not state any facts. You don't even see that a 6 months of extra bulb life is almost as much as the ATI recommend bulb life. That is a lot of saving. Sooo.

Be positive. People will respect you more.

ATI is active on here, so why dont you tag them them in this thread for a response or ask them directly in their sponsor thread.

I stated plenty of facts and posted a link to the info direct from their website. Doesn’t get anymore factual than that., you just choose to ignore it.

 

[Little_Red_Ryan_Hood]

ATI is active on here, so why dont you tag them them in this thread for a response or ask them directly in their sponsor thread.

I stated plenty of facts and posted a link to the info direct from their website. Doesn’t get anymore factual than that., you just choose to ignore it.

Because I am asking BRS for a recommendation not ATI. You seem to be missing that point. I can ask anyone I want for a recommendation and I should not be harassed by someone for that. I might remind you that we are on a BRS created thread, not ATI.

 

[Little_Red_Ryan_Hood]

Love my @ATI North America t-5s

15 second video


Front to back
B+
AB Special
B+
Purple+
Coral+
B+
B+

Do you have any filters on your camera? That looks great .

 

[tehmadreefer]

Because I am asking BRS for a recommendation not ATI. You seem to be missing that point. I can ask anyone I want for a recommendation and I should not be harassed by someone for that. I might remind you that we are on a BRS created thread, not ATI.

Here’s some help with an actinic bulb on ATI website. Enjoy!

Examples:
Here is an example using an 8 bulb fixture with a nice blue sunrise sunset and a 12-14K output, this will look like the first 5-10 feet deep in the ocean when diving/snorkeling.

BLUE PLUS
CORAL PLUS
TRUE ACTINIC (CHANNEL 1)
BLUE PLUS
AQUABLUE SPECIAL
BLUE PLUS (CHANNEL 1)
PURPLE PLUS
BLUE PLUS


Here is an example using a rich blue combination like a deeper dive in the ocean with lots of fluorescent pop in the corals:

BLUE PLUS
BLUE PLUS
TRUE ACTINIC (CHANNEL 1)
CORAL PLUS
PURPLE PLUS
BLUE PLUS (CHANNEL 1)
CORAL PLUS
BLUE PLUS

For more bulb combination ideas, check out our color temperature guides here.

 

[Leishman]

Do you have any filters on your camera? That looks great .

The original @Polyplab clip on with the yellow filter

 

[83years]

After watching that BRS episode on lighting I thought I would add in my two penny's worth.
Some disclaimers: I've never owned a reef tank,I am setting on up, but I do have a PhD in biophysics and optics. So I know a little bit about light, fluorescence and how organisms use it.

The first concept to get across is that lower wavelength light has more energy than higher wavelength light. This is why UV light at ~300nm is able to cause skin cancer but red light at ~640nm isn't able to do any damage to DNA.

The second concept is that water absorbs a lot of red light but very little blue light. This is why when we go diving there is a blue tint to everything.

The third concept is that there is no colour purple. What we think of as purple is our brains adding blue and red light together, it is not UV light. Our eyes have cone cells that react to blue, green and red light, from ~400nm to ~700nm - it is only three colours. Yellow is made by mixing signal from the red receptors and the green receptors. If you look at the spectrum here you will see yellow is between red and green. Purple is not on the spectrum diagram linked here, the colour to the left at ~400nm is Violet. I know this sounds like nitpicking but it's important later when looking at how light is used by organisms.

Let us go back in time a little to when there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. There was lots of Nitrogen, Carbon monoxide/dioxide, Ammonia and Methane in the atmosphere, we can ignore the nitrogen because that is still here, but where did the other commands absorb the most light? Ammonia has several absorption bands at 550nm, 650nm, 740nm and 1000nm - it absorbs green, yellow and red light but not UV. Carbon dioxide absorbs strongly in the deep UV at between 100nm and 230nm and like Methane absorbs a lot in the red and infrared. This leaves the spectrum from near UV ~350nm to green ~500nm free for photosynthesis. Early life took advantage of the higher energy level and water penetration of Violet light to power their metabolism. This set the stage for chlorophyl A to come alone after oxygen started to be more abundant in the atmosphere with its two strong absorption peaks at ~420nm and ~650nm.

Coral zooxanthellae have more than one type of photosensitive compound within their tissues. Figure 4 here shows the spectrum these algae can absorb. Note how all the peaks are ~400nm to ~500nm, which makes sense from the history of life in the oceans.

BUT we don't just want to grow coral, we want to inhibit the growth of other non-coral life. So it's good to know that blue light ~480nm can interfere with the growth of some cyanobacteria.

The coral themselves also produce pigments, these are the fluorescent colours we see. These serve a very different purpose to the photosynthetic dyes produced by the zooxanthellae - sunscreen. Deep UV light ~300nm damages all kinds of DNA, what can a stationary coral do to stop that? Make sunscreen, but that costs metabolic energy. Why not make a pigment that can take UV light and turn it into light that the Zooxanthellae can use? That is what fluorescence is, the conversion of high energy light into low energy light. Sometimes that just a few nanometers, changing UV light to violet light, sometimes is a big change from UV light to red light. Sometimes there are several dyes, all taking small steps to get a big change.

Hopefully, you are all still with me because here is the take home message:

• Zooxanthellae need light at ~400nm to ~500nm for photosynthesis.
• Light at ~480nm helps prevent cyanobacteria
• Chlorophyl A has a second peak at ~640nm - zooxanthellae don't use it as much as the 420nm peak
• human eyes see blue, green and red - purple is just in our brains - we can't gauge violet light brightness at all because we can hardly see it

The practical message is that we need to provide light from 400nm to 500nm for coral growth, we need the broad spectrum light (blue, green and red combined) for us to see into the tank BUT we don't want too much red light as other unwanted-organisms can use that light to grow.

 

[bbgobie]

Neither company has to be lying or wrong. They have different points of view. 1 is a manufacturer who has a recommendation based on a lifetime that will provide minimal degradation and warranty issues, probably with a healthy buffer and sales into mind.

The other is a test based on how par might drop or spectrum shift over time.

What might be acceptable for 1 person might be different than another's.

Imagine ATI recommended changing bulbs every 6 years and someone came along and did a test that showed par dropped by 75% over that time period and spectrum shifted quite a bit. In the US there could be lawsuits. The quality of the product might be in question because some bulbs are burning out after just 3 years for some people.

We all know the bulbs will generally burn more than 6-12 months, with testing like BRS has graciously provided we can make our own decisions about when to change them.

 

[randyBRS]

It would be really cool if BRS did a video recommendation for ATI bulb combinations. Have a recommendation for T5 only tanks. 4 bulb 6 bulb and 8 bulb configurations.

I know it's not as sexy as talking about LED's but there are always people looking for bulb combo recommendations on R2R. That way we can point them to your video.

This one is coming with the ATI Sunpower Investigates video in a couple of weeks!

 

[Bruce Burnett]

This one is coming with the ATI Sunpower Investigates video in a couple of weeks!

Sounds great as i am working on lighting for new tank. All T5, All Led or Led T5 combo.

 

[Big E]

From my experience the past 7 years of running Sunpower with Coral+ & Blue+ over dominate Acro system I change out the bulbs at 10 months.

I run only those two bulbs because they repeat the same spectrum that blankets the whole tank exactly the same and cover the whole range from 400-600nm that excite all color pigments that any coral species may have.

If you don't care about spectrum shift or slower growth for a few months you can stretch them to 12. I don't want 4 months of that so I would never go to 14 months.

If over just LPS and softies you could probably go well over 14 months.

If you want a little extra visual bling you can add a couple of blue/violet LED strips.

 

[randyBRS]

From my experience the past 7 years of running Sunpower with Coral+ & Blue+ over dominate Acro system I change out the bulbs at 10 months.
I run only those two bulbs because they repeat the same spectrum that blankets the whole tank exactly the same and cover the whole range from 400-600nm that excite all color pigments that any coral species may have.
If you don't care about spectrum shift or slower growth for a few months you can stretch them to 12. I don't want 4 months of that so I would never go to 14 months.
If over just LPS and softies you could probably go well over 14 months.
If you want a little extra visual bling you can add a couple of blue/violet LED strips.

I completely agree with you on that bulb combo! Next week we're releasing out ATI Sunpower light testing and I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised.

From our extensive testing, I wouldn't hesitate to stretch bulbs out past 12 months to even 18 months. We simply found that the change in PAR is very negligible and actually the higher percentage of PAR loss comes in that first 30days of use!

We also found nearly undetectable shifts in spectrum across bulbs tested fresh out of the box compared to those with a simulated 2yr run time. I personally once believed that there was a larger shift over time, but now I think that conversation has run its course and just isn't a real concern.

I think you would really enjoy the testing videos we did on this subject! They were VERY eye opening for me as an avid T5 believer!

T5 Bulb Testing PART-1



T5 Bulb Testing PART-2



Cooling T5 Bulbs and PAR

 

[Chlorinated]

After watching that BRS episode on lighting I thought I would add in my two penny's worth.
Some disclaimers: I've never owned a reef tank,I am setting on up, but I do have a PhD in biophysics and optics. So I know a little bit about light, fluorescence and how organisms use it.

The first concept to get across is that lower wavelength light has more energy than higher wavelength light. This is why UV light at ~300nm is able to cause skin cancer but red light at ~640nm isn't able to do any damage to DNA.

The second concept is that water absorbs a lot of red light but very little blue light. This is why when we go diving there is a blue tint to everything.

The third concept is that there is no colour purple. What we think of as purple is our brains adding blue and red light together, it is not UV light. Our eyes have cone cells that react to blue, green and red light, from ~400nm to ~700nm - it is only three colours. Yellow is made by mixing signal from the red receptors and the green receptors. If you look at the spectrum here you will see yellow is between red and green. Purple is not on the spectrum diagram linked here, the colour to the left at ~400nm is Violet. I know this sounds like nitpicking but it's important later when looking at how light is used by organisms.

Let us go back in time a little to when there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. There was lots of Nitrogen, Carbon monoxide/dioxide, Ammonia and Methane in the atmosphere, we can ignore the nitrogen because that is still here, but where did the other commands absorb the most light? Ammonia has several absorption bands at 550nm, 650nm, 740nm and 1000nm - it absorbs green, yellow and red light but not UV. Carbon dioxide absorbs strongly in the deep UV at between 100nm and 230nm and like Methane absorbs a lot in the red and infrared. This leaves the spectrum from near UV ~350nm to green ~500nm free for photosynthesis. Early life took advantage of the higher energy level and water penetration of Violet light to power their metabolism. This set the stage for chlorophyl A to come alone after oxygen started to be more abundant in the atmosphere with its two strong absorption peaks at ~420nm and ~650nm.

Coral zooxanthellae have more than one type of photosensitive compound within their tissues. Figure 4 here shows the spectrum these algae can absorb. Note how all the peaks are ~400nm to ~500nm, which makes sense from the history of life in the oceans.

BUT we don't just want to grow coral, we want to inhibit the growth of other non-coral life. So it's good to know that blue light ~480nm can interfere with the growth of some cyanobacteria.

The coral themselves also produce pigments, these are the fluorescent colours we see. These serve a very different purpose to the photosynthetic dyes produced by the zooxanthellae - sunscreen. Deep UV light ~300nm damages all kinds of DNA, what can a stationary coral do to stop that? Make sunscreen, but that costs metabolic energy. Why not make a pigment that can take UV light and turn it into light that the Zooxanthellae can use? That is what fluorescence is, the conversion of high energy light into low energy light. Sometimes that just a few nanometers, changing UV light to violet light, sometimes is a big change from UV light to red light. Sometimes there are several dyes, all taking small steps to get a big change.

Hopefully, you are all still with me because here is the take home message:

• Zooxanthellae need light at ~400nm to ~500nm for photosynthesis.
• Light at ~480nm helps prevent cyanobacteria
• Chlorophyl A has a second peak at ~640nm - zooxanthellae don't use it as much as the 420nm peak
• human eyes see blue, green and red - purple is just in our brains - we can't gauge violet light brightness at all because we can hardly see it

The practical message is that we need to provide light from 400nm to 500nm for coral growth, we need the broad spectrum light (blue, green and red combined) for us to see into the tank BUT we don't want too much red light as other unwanted-organisms can use that light to grow.

Very well written and informative! Thank you for that writeup!