With typical daily photo periods of 8-12 hours T5 bulbs carry the average life-span is 9-12 months. If it’s been more than 12 months since your last bulb change, it’s probably time for a change.
How To Replace
- New bulbs typically produce twice as much PAR (output) as old bulbs. To avoid shock to your corals it is always best to spread out a bulb change over a period of several weeks (Reef tank golden rule: nothing good happens fast).
- Change out just 1 or 2 bulbs per week. Doing so will allow your corals to more easily acclimate to the new, brighter bulbs.
- Brand new lamps have a burn in period of 50 hours. During this time they should not be dimmed; if using a dimmable fixture. They may also illuminate inconsistently or flicker during this period. Don't worry this is perfectly Normal.
Question. How do you go about doing a 50 hour burn-in if only changing out a couple of bulbs at a time? Do I just turn off the dimming and strictly run everything on/off for a week or so?
Yes you could certainly just turn off the dimming and strictly run everything on/off for about 50 hrs.
A great way to do this would be to coordinate it with some dosing or tank maintenance, and pull the light down, install your set of new bulbs, and run them for 50hrs straight, off the tank.
Then, reinstall your old bulbs, and you can then one by one every week replace them with the new, completely burned in bulbs and not interrupt your dimming programming. This also allows you to not shock the system as much going from all old bulbs to a full set of all new bulbs all at once.
dimming the bulb right away will reduce the usable lifespan of the bulb. The burn in period allows the phosphors and mercury to properly distribute throughout the whole tube. Dimming the lamp prematurely can disrupt this process. It sounds like your best solution would be to replace all the lamps and raise the fixture during the burn in period.
Размещение ламп в светильнике АТИ:
the end with the label needs to be on the end with the vent holes. This puts the coolest air right onto the cold cathode in the bulb which is the most critical part to cool. It does not matter if the label is facing up or down, but the label end needs to be on the vent hole end. If you have it backwards (end over end) the cold cathode will get the hottest air (since it has already traveled the full length of the tube) which will not do as good of a job cooling this critical part of the T5 bulb.
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