T5 or led

Chibils · Jun 24, 2016

FarmerTy said:
Chibils, 100% agree!

Just to catch you up, the OP already bought the T5s and was asking how long should he run them.

Whoops that's what I get for not reading all the way through [emoji2]

There are two real options for the T5s. Either run them as actinic dusk/dawn supplements for color or run them as daylight supplements during the middle of the day as an extra 'pop'.

Since fluorescents are better on the blue end than the white/yellow end, people traditionally use supplemental T5s for actinics/color enhancement. This would be some ATI Blue+ or Actinic lamps which would give you some fantastic color and a little extra PAR that it seems you could probably use. I'd also recommend trying a Korallen-Zucht Fiji Purple if you want the neon actinics as it does some cool things especially for reds and purples.

However LEDs even more so than fluorescents tend toward blue and most LED fixtures are really heavy on the blue already so unless you like the Windex blue look with blue/purple sand you might consider using the LEDs as a source of extra PAR and white light. Usually people do this during the middle of their light cycle while the lights are fully ramped up, say from 10:00 to 14:00 or 11:00 to 13:00. I'd recommend ATI Coral+ tubes for this as they give a lot of PAR and really cut some of the blue like the bright midday sun. You could also try a Korallen-Zucht Fiji Pink to bring out pink/red/orange colors. Some people don't like this look, it's personal opinion.

I think you'll like the T5 supplements. They produce very even light and look great.

oodan · Jun 28, 2016

I run led and t5 my led have built in timers and I run them on a pre programmed setting but as for my t5 I run both white and blue at the same time comes on with a timer at 9 am to 6 pm my led is on win I wake up doing the whole moon light thing and win I go to bed it does a twinkle thing