Easy cheap upgrade on lighting?

gemini9 · Oct 8, 2014

Jeesh! lol You guys making me spend my money again! :sad:

Buy some T5 lights... buy an extra bulb.... then upgrade to ATI bulbs... then buy a 2nd Odyssea for a backup
Hey all I have is the 85 bucks I spent on the fixture. The rest of my dough goes to bills. Heating oil for the furnace.... car repairs... electric bill.... you know how it is....

So basically what your saying here is that the Odyssea I bought is junk? :sad: The bulbs only will last a few months and the ballasts will fault out easy? What is this... ATI? :squigglemouth:

Pete polyp · Oct 8, 2014

No.... the odyssea I have is two years old. The older ones did have issues with ballasts, but I'm pretty sure they fixed them. Bulbs are going to lose intensity over time and need to be replaced. The stock bulbs are fine for keeping corals, but most prefer other bulbs, like ati, for color.

J062682l · Oct 9, 2014

I had a quad t5 oddysea I changed my bulbs to Red Sea bulbs and wow my corals grew ,,, but my moon light LEDs blew out , and after changing the bulbs 2 times in. A year (25$$abulb) I decided LEDs was the way! I'm very happy with my LEDs. Your doing the same thing I did ,, stop!!! Take your time, save up and buy equipment that's worth it!! I jumped and bought the cheapest things possible now I'm in the middle of an expensive overhaul I could have avoided if I took my time and listened to the veterans in this site ! Remember with patience this hobby is completely rewarding ,, if you move to fast and get the cheapest stuff possible. You will pay for it later , especially if you crash and lose hundreds of dollars of fish and coral good luck bro !!

J062682l · Oct 9, 2014

J062682l said:
I had a quad t5 oddysea I changed my bulbs to Red Sea bulbs and wow my corals grew ,,, but my moon light LEDs blew out , and after changing the bulbs 2 times in. A year (25$$abulb) I decided LEDs was the way! I'm very happy with my LEDs. Your doing the same thing I did ,, stop!!! Take your time, save up and buy equipment that's worth it!! I jumped and bought the cheapest things possible now I'm in the middle of an expensive overhaul I could have avoided if I took my time and listened to the veterans in this site ! Remember with patience this hobby is completely rewarding ,, if you move to fast and get the cheapest stuff possible. You will pay for it later , especially if you crash and lose hundreds of dollars of fish and coral good luck bro !!

By the way that was 100 for my 48 in quad t5 fixture and 4 bulbs at25$ a piece 2 times in a year. So that's 300$ in a year , for that price I could have got a decent Chinese led and never change a bulb again! Think long haul and future investments and not just in the now! Good luck

gemini9 · Oct 10, 2014

Oops. I already ordered it. Nobody really mentioned any of that soon enough, so I went with the previous suggestions and bought the T5. It arrived today and I have it on my tank. Posted a thread in the equipment and lighting thread to find out how to properly set it up. If I'd known all the trouble I would end up having with my odyssea, I would have gotten the LEDs instead. Would have taken a month of saving, but I would have done so. I'm not really liking the color of the stock bulbs. lol In truth, the stock light gave me better color than these do. They are brighter, yeah, and I can see every little detail in the tank. Including every little smudge, hair, fungus, algae, spot, speckle and everything else in there that I never even noticed before. But I did like the color of the stock flourescent bulb I had before. Maybe my girlfriend will buy me some LED lights for christmas, along with my power saws and stuff for my mustang lol... meh.. she's behind me reading this and started laughing at me.

meh... :sad:

Reef_a_holiks · Oct 10, 2014

gemini9 said:
Oops. I already ordered it. Nobody really mentioned any of that soon enough, so I went with the previous suggestions and bought the T5. It arrived today and I have it on my tank. Posted a thread in the equipment and lighting thread to find out how to properly set it up. If I'd known all the trouble I would end up having with my odyssea, I would have gotten the LEDs instead. Would have taken a month of saving, but I would have done so. I'm not really liking the color of the stock bulbs. lol In truth, the stock light gave me better color than these do. They are brighter, yeah, and I can see every little detail in the tank. Including every little smudge, hair, fungus, algae, spot, speckle and everything else in there that I never even noticed before. But I did like the color of the stock flourescent bulb I had before. Maybe my girlfriend will buy me some LED lights for christmas, along with my power saws and stuff for my mustang lol... meh.. she's behind me reading this and started laughing at me. meh... :sad:

Dont be discouraged about your new T5 fixture, that is a awesome light for the price. i ran a oddysea t5 fixture for about a year and half with no issues and corals did great. Install your light, enjoy it, and about the 6-8 month mark start looking for new bulbs or maybe post the fixture for sale and put the money towards some leds. Both Leds and T5s are great lights, Some people like T5s more while some like Leds more, its all preference.

gemini9 · Oct 10, 2014

How should I set up the timer? Should I use the 10000k during the day, the 6500k Blue Actinic after dark and the moonshade leds after midnight? What about having both the 10000k AND the 65000 Blue Actinics on at the same time? Should they both be turned on midday? I'm not sure what times to make the settings for the different lights. I'm not using the legs, I have the fixture sitting directly on my glass top. Is that bad? Should I use the legs? Should I completely take off the glass lid?

J062682l · Oct 10, 2014

Blues for 10hrs whites for 8 hrs and moonlights at nite

J062682l · Oct 10, 2014

I would use the legs , it will help keep the lights cleaner and will help keep salt creep out of the light fixture

gemini9 · Oct 10, 2014

Either way, with or without the legs, I have to move the light fixture anytime I feed the fish because I don't have enough room to get my glass lid open. Should I just remove that lid all together? Do I need to worry about my fish or snails getting out of the tank if I remove the glass lid? Should I turn the leds off when I'm a sleep? I mean like, do fish need total darkness?

Oh, and do I need to keep one certain light on for the straight 8-10 hours, or can I divide it up to like, 4 hours of blue in the morning, whites during the day and 4 hours of blue in the late evening with leds at bedtime?

J062682l · Oct 10, 2014

I think it's best to do the way I mentioned. I ran my t5 just like that and I run my LEDs the same. My blue LEDs go on at 12:30 and go off at 10:30 my white LEDs run 3-8 ,,,,, you can turn the lights off when u sleep

J062682l · Oct 11, 2014

Srry I accidentally sent that , fat fingers small phone. Lol. You run both lights so that they get the proper wavelengths all day , yes to tops ,, I don't have one and my male clown jumped a few weeks ago ,, IMO use the legs for the light does wha I said before and allows flow under lights for air

Pete polyp · Oct 11, 2014

You want to time it with blue only for an hour or two, all 4 on for daytime and blue for an hour or two before they go off. The moonlights can be on during the entire night, or partial. Its whatever you prefer. If you had coral already you would like the color of those new bulbs much better than your old ones.

gemini9 · Oct 11, 2014

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll try to figure out how to set the timer on this thing and get that good to go. My nitrates are better, than they were, pete. They are usually at 20ppm and up to around 40ppm before water changes. I was doing 50% water changes weekly but decided that was to much, so now I've been doing about a 20-30% wc on saturdays and then another 10-20 percent on Wednesdays so it's not so much all at once. With my nitrates usually around 20ppm, is that acceptable to get an anemone? I'd like to get one this weekend for my clownies. And then next weekend grab a few corals if you think my water can handle them at this point.

Pete polyp · Oct 11, 2014

I would hold off on the nem for now. They like an established stable tank.

Something else to consider about getting a nem would be powerheads and equipment intakes. For some reason they really like to find these and get sucked into them.

Maybe it would be a good test to get an easy to keep coral, like zoa, to test the waters.

gemini9 · Oct 11, 2014

After playing around a bit with the legs and the fixture, I actually thionk I like it better without the legs. With the fixture laying straight on top of the glass, it tends to hide the equipment hanging on the back of the tank and the light doesn't seem to "flood out" into the rest of the room and stays confined to the aquarium, which is nice. My only concer is over heating tho, becaues these lights to get a little hot. As you mentioned, it will allow more air flow if the legs are in use... but I don't really like them. lol

gemini9 · Oct 11, 2014

Thanks pete. Okay I might hold off on the nem. Although Nems at my LFS are only 9.99 which isn't bad. LFS said I could bring back this stupid fiddler crab for store credit so that's cool.

My tank has been up since march, as you know. As for my powerheads and equipment, well here's what I've got. The t5 I just bought, I have a Marineland Maxi-Jet 400 set up in circulation mode, which gives about 500 max gph in my 30g tank. It's kinda big bulky and ugly so I've been considering getting something else. Ebay is selling a pair of 800gph powerheads. was considering getting the pair of those, but wondering if it would be too much for my tank since I've got this sand in the tank now. I've also got a Marineland Penguin 350 HOB filter which adds a bit more flow on the other end of the tank. And then there's my Reef Octopus bh150 skimmer. Currently, my powerhead is near the top of the tank, pointed slightly upward to agitate the water surface a bit.