Just keep in mind the heat produced by these, if your planning on using them with cooler loving species. Plenty of light thou.
Also you might want to figure out how much these will cost for power usage and compare it to other options out there.
Part of a longer reply in the Terrarium lighting 101 thread, there is more info I posted in that thread but here are my basic numbers, all are subjective from my experiences with T5s and ONE type of LED that I'm using. Not all LEDs are created equally.
Basically the important info is that in my area with my electrical costs the LEDs lower power usage would pay for itself in 2.5 years and in 3.14 years I've now paid the electric company the ENTIRE cost of my LED system just to run the T5s.
Its just a guess but I'd think CA power costs more than TX power
If that is true the break even points would come quicker.
The 24" fixture should use 1.152 KW/h per 12 hours so 420 KW/h a year. For me that would be a running cost of just under $48 a year.
"Here are the electrical costs for me @ $.114 per KWH
Running 2 48" T5 12 hours a day (48.75W*2)*12 = 1.17KWH = $.133 per day running costs or $48.68 per year.
Running 16 LEDs @ 350mA 12 hours a day (1.355W*16)*12 = .26KWH = $.03 per day running costs or $10.83 per year
So running T5s would cost me an extra $37.85 per year in electrical costs. This is a very important number as we can use it to figure out the "break even" point for the LEDs.
For a while you could get a 4 bulb 48" T5 fixture for $60, I will use that example even thou I was not able to locate that fixture for sale a few weeks ago.
Setup costs for the T5 system would be $60 (bulbs included/shipping included), it was/is a great deal.
Setup costs for the LED system would be $153
Using the break even number we can figure out that the LED system would be $93 more right out the gate. So the extra setup costs of the LEDs divided by the extra electrical costs of the T5 system gives us the # of years it would take to break even. $93/37.85=2.46 years
At 3.14 years running the T5 system you have paid enough in electricity to buy the LED system.
At 4.04 years running the T5 system you have paid enough in electricity to buy the LED system and run it for those 4 years. This bit of info is useful if you already have a T5 system running.
Since I'm in this for the long run, T5s just don't make sense anymore for me. The main exception I can think of is if you wanted the heat from the T5 for the plants/animals in the terrarium. "
