What provides the shimmer in the water?

[sean obergfell]

Is there any other way to get the shimmering effect other then MH?

[aninjaatemyshoe]

LEDs... both moonlight and Solaris (though moonlights obviously won't work as a sole light source for a reef tank).

To some extent you can get a shimmer with a good amount of surface water motion even with a T5 setup. Will not compare to the effect of a MH though.

Why are you looking for an alternative?

[sean obergfell]

Wwell, I'm looking for new lighting and love the shimmer effect but don't love MH. Heat, Heat, Heat. Chiller Chiller Chiller.
I was hoping the T5 would do the job.

[aninjaatemyshoe]

The heat problem with MHs is overstated (as is the idea that you'll avoid the same issue with similarly powered T5s). If you have good ventiliation above your tank and use fans you should be able to have enough evaporative cooling to keep the temperature down. Invest in that and an auto top-off system and you should be fine. Just as a for instance, my 38 gallon tank runs a 250W MH over it, don't have heat problems except when the room temperature is way high when it's 90 degrees outside.

[nick18tjetta]

I have a friend with a tank lit with VHO's only, and he has heat issues and I don't. I run 2 4" actinic vho's and 2 iwasaki 175w 15k's and I get better results and have less heat issues. You do not need 250w or 400w halides, many reefers have had great success with the Iwasakis. I also found when pricing out lighting for my 120 that you can get a proper MH setup cheaper than a proper T5 setup.

I also saw one of the new solaris lights today, and I must say it looks awesome. It was much better than the early models, if you have $2000-$4000 to throw around for lights.

[Kaos]

To get the "shimmer effect" you need a point source light and turbulance on the water's surface.

The MH and heat thing is overrated. I have a 175w MH pendant 3" from the water's surface on my 10gal. and my temp. stays between 78 and 80. I do have a fan that blows on the pendant and not the water's surface (plugged into the same timer as the lights).

The downside w/ MH (and the fan) is that the evaporation is considerably more. I had a 96w Quad over the tank before the MH and only evaperated approx. 2 gal. a week. Since adding the MH setup I am using about 2 gal. every 3 days.

[jski711]

everybody in this post keeps saying heat is overrated but what temp is the room that your tank is in. i had 2 150's that were about 6" from the water and if it was cool out in the morning and i left the windows open and it got hot out, i would come home to an 85 degree tank! i did have two fans blowing directly over the surface of the water also. my 6 bulb tek fixture gives off way less heat than the metal halides did and have not had any heat issues whatsoever. i also do get a little shimmer but my t5s but not like mh does.

[iwishtofish]

I have a 150w MH pendant hanging about 8" over my 29g open top nano, and I only run about 1 degree warmer when it is on. However, I do keep the room at 72-74 degrees and I have two 3" cooling fans sucking air into my cabinet over the sump. I do not run a fan over top of the display tank.

[sean obergfell]

What about a fixture (Aquactinics) that has MH and T5. I have heard that they are excellent at not creating excessive heat in the way they are made. Would the fixture make the difference in heat???

[DarG]

You could use T5 lighting as your primary source and then use 70 watt halides for the shimmer effect plus supplementing the T5's some as well. But that sure would be an expensive way to add shimmer. If you are going to do that, you may as well go with halides as the primary lighting from a financial standpoint.

You always hear positive things about the Aquactinics fixtures. I'm not sure how they stack up as far as how well the fixtures are ventialted. I'm sure others can help there.
But no matter how well a fixture is ventilated, you are still going to transfer heat to the water, from halides, or T5. My DIY fixture is all aluminum and the fixture itself runs cool, very cool, with the way it is vented and fan cooled. But the light itself still generate heat that is transferred to the water to some degree, even with active cooling. All you can do is minimize the effect, you cant completely prevent all heat transfer.

So, if you want the shimmer that metal halide gives, then plan your lighting with Metal halide, either alone or with T5 or other flourescent supplementation. Just take cooling into account when planning your lighting. In lieu of that, you could shine incandescent type spotlights down on your tank to get an effective shimmer effect. But color is going to be an issue with limited selection of spectrums and they still generate heat and plenty of it, especially if you install them inside a hood or canopy.

[sean obergfell]

Thank you, great help: so keep them coming

[Sarcophyton874]

Pour freshwater into the tank .