roidan

never mind..u can keep that in mind for the next project..hehe printing plates? i wish i have

ya..get the spider reflectors bro, will definitely be more efficient..can get more light reflected back into the tank itself...

yo sis, so you were the other one

really worth it.. go measure the phosphate levels with salifert test kit or some other low resolution phosphate test kit like la motte and after using rowaphos, measure again the next day... u will find a huge drop if current phosphate levels are high

u mean rowaphos? definitely works.... can bring phosphate levels to zero very fast if you use the correct amount....

maybe we can start an Anti-ManU club here get enough people next time go to their cafe during their matches and cheer the other team on 1) Roidan 2) 3) 4) hahaha

keeping for future use bro....definitely will use them up in time to come....by then if cannot buy in this 5kg bucket again...then have to pay more for those smaller packaged ones liao

arcane is right... very hard to determine consumption of the media except to test for phosphate in the water regularly...when it rises, you know the media is exhausted and due for a change

got at 300plus for this rare 5kgbucket from online store here... so definitely works out to less than $100 per kg....

the unpopular one may not be you..but the product you are using

T5= 16mm tube diameter T8= 26 mm tube diameter T10= 1 1/4 inch tube diameter

basically they are the tua tua gee fluorescent tubes around hardware shops and aquarium shops....

personally i feel that MHs still have the edge over T5s in terms of perfomance....but cooling wise of coz T5s win...hehe

there are T8 and T10 tubes around...basically those are the normal aquarium fluorescent tubes that have been around for eons and also those tubes in our old HDB void deck days... they are definitely much cheaper...but much bigger as well.. the beauty of T5s is that they produce as much or even more light than the t8 or t10 but yet take a fraction of the space meaning you can squeeze more tubes and have more light......but ....more expensive ..haha

i am not too sure about that, probably you will end up overdriving your tube...your tube may be very bright compared to running it with a matching wattage ballast, but the tube will suffer a shorter usage life

no problem... have fun choosing your lights

generally, the higher the Kelvins, the lower the PAR.....in very layman terms you can probably treat it as penetrative power although it means photosynthetically active radiation so we talk layman terms here, a tube of same wattage 10 000K vs same wattage 20 000K, the 10 000K tube with higher PAR can reach lower depths better to give your corals more usable light for photosynthesis...layman terms and of coz for the same colour temperature(K), higher wattage 10 000K tube vs lower wattage 10 000K tube, the higher wattage will give out more light than the lower wattage.... eg. take for example..i mean loose example...the sun gives out the same kelvin (colour temperature) as your candle...(actually they are not the same kelvin..but let's take it as they are)....but the sun (bigger wattage) will give more light output than your candle (lower wattage) right? hope my amateurish examples can help you understand better

hehe...wah....steady liao...

which means u just want to use the housing of the dymax right? so what are you going to do with the dymax ballast and tube? abit wasted hor... can get at sinter at sim lim tower...they often do not have stocks...so call them before u go

if u ask the supplier or whoever..probably they may say yeah yeah yeah..HIGH OUTPUT mah...so bright so bright...sure high output...hehe but always learn to take what they say with a pinch of salt...with the power of the internet, probably we know more of the product than they themselves... the feedback by bro nic a jon sums it up....if you use 39W ATI tubes on your 30W dymax....it will not be efficient...may end up your 30W dymax tube is brighter or as bright....so dun waste the money... if you want brighter, gotta change the whole setup to get a 39W ballast to match the 39W T5 HO tube

no problem.... at least this thread can let other bros think if they wanna go the dymax way or the higher output german ways...hehe a matter of price/perfomance here...just choose what suits each application best

thanks nic... u confirmed what i have said earlier..thanks..hehe

you are totally right.... but one thing..changing the many tubes of HO T5 is quite expensive compared to a couple of MH bulbs.... but maybe the cost saving of chiller running less often can offset this bulb change price

actually there are some retrofit sets in the net that can house 8tubes of T5s.. imagine 4ft tank, 8x54= 432W of T5s... no wonder some germans can keep sps in such T5-intensive tanks

maybe for main tank, one can use those germans HO T5s...and for the sump, he can use the dymax T5s.... totally T5 setup...will be quite interesting...let's hope some bros here go this T5 way instead of our usual MH setups....