tapscrew

Hi,

I run a 125 liter tank with 2 36watt T8 tubes and 2 yeast C02. I add ferts using tom barr method and tbh I have always had a few probs with algae which I deal with by overdosing flourish excel. I am thinking of switching to T5s to improve plant growth and allow me to grow a better range of plants, is this a good move or not? (If I switch I will have to build a new tank hood as the old one will not accomodate different lighting.) What does anyone think about this? Any opinions/ ideas welcome!

Thanks

mudboots

IMHO T5-HO is much more efficient, but it may have a lot to do with individual reflectors, so it depends on what you have at the moment pushing your T8's. But if you increase the amount of available light for your plants to use (wpg, PAR values, et cetera) you're also adding to what the algae will have available, so careful monitoring on fertz and CO2 will still be critical. Going with T5's helped me to acheive a beautiful shade of pea soup, which was not a good thing, and I had to cut down on the photoperiod to get things back to normal (since I don't dose fertz or CO2 I couldn't very well adjust these).