T5 Lighting cycles

[SynDen]

Either way I will try them out this weekend and see. Would be nice to have the retrofit though so I could mount to my canopy and not have to deal with fixture as much, but then again it would take up all my reefed funds if I did.

 

[Andrew_bram]

You can angle them without bending

 

[SynDen]

hmm kk.. ill try that

 

[SynDen]

Well I tried to put the reflectors in tonight, but don't think I will be able to fit those into that tightly packed fixture. The bulbs each are about a half inch apart and even if I angle them the reflectors will end up covering at least 2 of the bulbs if I put them in. Plus I was looking at the bulbs that are currently in it and surprised by what I saw. I just replaced the blue lights in November but they look like they have been used for several years or something. They were both dark speckled gray through the entire tube. Surprised they were still working at all as they look like they should be burnt out.

So trying to decide what to do since I already have the reflectors Im thinking maybe just better to buy the remaining pieces for the retrofit kit or buy a different fixture. Gonna cost about the same in the end. The nice part about the retrofit though will be that I can mount it to the top of my canopy and put in some nice fans to keep it super cool and it will all be hidden then.

On the plus side, as I was putting the clips on the reflectors tonight I noticed the reefgeek sent me 5 reflectors instead of the 4 that I ordered. Not that I really need another reflector but hey I got an extra one at no charge.

 

[Andrew_bram]

Give me a call 9702901784

 

[SynDen]

[attachment=66627:name]

So I can get 3 in with the two at the side angled and 2 bulbs sharing the middle one. No way to get the 4th in though and the mid reflector covers about 40% of the side reflectors. Im sure this will increase light fairly dramatically but not quite what I was hoping for. Would be nice if this thing had a bit more space in it to work with.

 

[Andrew_bram]

That really is tight. What about gutting the fixture.

 

[SynDen]

ya I tried it with taking the single reflector and everything out on the inside that I could but it only gave me a fraction of an inch more overall

 

[SynDen]

I suppose I could try taking the whole thing apart and mount it without the shell, but those socket/clips are even so close together that I would need to reconfigure them somehow as well. Thus why I am thinking maybe I should just buy the other parts for the retrofit and mount it all on the top of my canopy lid

 

[Andrew_bram]

Can't go wrong with the retro depending on schedule I could possibly help.

 

[SynDen]

Well I ordered the rest of the parts for the retrofit kit, so should be here in a few days. In the mean time I went ahead and replaced the bulbs in the old lamp and left 2 of the reflectors in to start acclimating the corals to it all. Really happy with the bulb combo on these though, holy cow did that make an amazing difference, finally got that color pop I have been looking for. Looks as good as any LEDs, and those reflectors really give it quite a bit more brightness.
Before putting these in I did the last two days in darkness for the tank. Today I turned on the blues for about 2 hours. Tomorrow they will get 3.5 hours of blues and 1 hour of daylight. I will prolly hold at that until after getting the retrofit kit together and then slowly ramp up from there.

 

[Andrew_bram]

Sounds like a good plan