# T5 Lights



## DariusV (Jun 9, 2012)

Hi All
Just joined this forum, I do need some help with lighting ... since I am getting conflicting information from multiple sources.
The dimensions of my tank are 120cm x 45cm x 60cm
I recently got a T5 unit, its from a company called aquazonic .. It has 2 x 54w daylight white 12000k and 2 x 54 actinic blue 12000k.
Not sure if this is a HO unit as it just says superbright on the cover.
Just today I was told that due to the height of my tank the lighting would be lower than required.

Need your opinion ... Pls advise.
Please see below is the image of my tank ... its just about 1.5 weeks old


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## scotty82 (May 9, 2012)

From my understanding your bulbs are for a salt water set up. If you want to grow plants in a freshwater set up you'll want the K rating closer to 6500K. Anywhere betweedn 5000k and 10000K will work, but you'll want at least half your lights closer to the 6500K range.


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## Hoppy (Dec 24, 2005)

54 watt T5 bulbs in that length are T5HO, to the best of my knowledge. I googled aquazonic and found some photos of the light. It seems to have good reflectors. Based on that, a 60 cm (24 inch) high tank should get about 40-50 micromols of PAR per bulb, which would be low medium light. With 4 closely spaced bulbs that would be as much as 200 micromols of PAR, way too much light. With even 2 close together bulbs it would be very high light. If you can run just the two outer bulbs, you might get enough spread of the light to cover the 45 cm front to back depth of the tank, without getting such high PAR. Plants will grow with light that isn't within the 5000-10000K range, but possibly not as well as if it were. From what I see from googling, the 12000K bulbs work well enough for planted tanks, so I would just use those.


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## DariusV (Jun 9, 2012)

Sorry Hoppy ... I didnt get a chance to thank you on this earlier ... havent gone online all weekend ...
Thank you for resolving this ... I was like man i just put 150 bucks on this unit and now i gotta spend more ... 

What would happen though if i leave all 4 bulbs on?


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