Fishy Business

Going Hybrid T5/LED

Newjack

Newjack

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Just thinking aloud to mysrelf. Should I add T5's to my current LED only set up? What would be a nice retro kit ? I use a canopy, so It could be a DiY retro kit. I only have room for 2 bulbs. most likely 1 in front/ 1 in back. LED down the middle. if you only could pick 2 bulb colors, what would they be? I'm considering adding theses for better growth and overall heath. I think I get more than enough color/blue from the LED already. Feel free to chime in, Toss me some ideals... :rolleyes:
 
ATi blue plus would be my first choice, it's almost as much light output as a "white" bulb but it's blue! Then I would make my second choice based on how overpowering the blue looks, 1 blue 1 white (forgot the name/brand of the white I used to use) looks very nice. Now I'm not sure where your existing LEDs stand, but I know with every fixture I've had I always turned down the white channels to get more blue, so with some blue plus bulbs you could turn it up.
 
Loved my T5s when I had them long ago.

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The same thought had crossed my mind a few times.

It seems to me that the older Royal-Blue + Cool White LEDs are somewhat lacking, so worth tweaking.
If you have some of the newer multi-spectrum LEDs, I would not bother.

My opinion: You want to focus on having the T5 fill in the spectrum that the LEDs miss, which
makes your choices a bit different from a normal T5 fixture.
Thoughts:
Avoid 460 nm, since LED has a huge spike there in Royal Blue.
Add Super-Actinic 420, to fill in the lower UV end.
Add Daylight type, as low a color temp as possible without it looking yellow, to fill in the upper and.
Probably a 10K, but could range 6.5K to 12K depending on what else you have in there.
 
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