Thread: T5 lightings
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Old 05-10-2006, 05:56 PM   #14
aropal
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The beauty of systems like MH is that being spot lights they have certain benefits over tubes.

Firstly, they do not light the entire aquarium uniformly, thus giving the fish some shaded areas to retreat to if they are feeling a little nervous; relaxed fish are happy colourful fish.

Also, seeing fish swimming in and out of pools of light is also very pretty and looks like beams of sunlight penetrating the water and projecting shadows on the substrate below in a very natural manner. Of course light does scatter when it hits the bottom of the aquarium so it’s not like everything outside of the shafts of light is pitch black.

Unfortunately, as you say MH produce a lot of heat. They also only come in very high powers. There is an alternative which I have tried before called Solux.

Solux are low power halogen lights (35 -50 watts) but unlike normal halogens these have a very high CRI (colour rendering index) The company claim it is 98 which is frankly a little hard to believe. They emit almost no light in the infra red or ultra violet which adds to their effectiveness in an aquarium environment and they run cool to the touch.

I haven’t used them in a 2 foot deep water column but they are quite cheap so you could give it a try and see how it looks in your tank.

This is a link to a UK site which sells them. You'd best source them yourselves in your own country where it will no doubt be cheaper but this site provides an illustration of the operation of Solux:
http://www.triwholesale.co.uk/solux.htm

Last edited by aropal; 05-10-2006 at 06:08 PM.