thbrewst
01/31/2012, 09:50 AM
I have a 72" Hamilton fixture with 3 175w MH (mogul) and 4 96w PCs over a 175 gal tank. I am generally OK with this fixture but have debated switching over to LED. As with most the cost plus infancy of the technology is scarring me off a bit. So I was also wondering what it would take to simply change out the inards of the fixture that I have now. There are 2 fundamental things I would want to tweak if it were somewhat cost effective.
MH, I do not think that the 175w is giving me as much light as I would like to have. I would prefer to bump this up to 250w. So first question; can you switch this up by simply replacing the ballasts and the bulbs or is there more to it than that? Is the wiring different? The socket different?
PCs, given that PCs are slowly going out of the market I would prefer to switch these out for T5s. I am not sure what the difficulty would be to wire and install something like this into the fixture or how many it would take to at least equal the 4 PCs I have now. Also would I need to add ballasts or could I reuse what I have. I think there is a Fulham Workhorse 5 driving each PC today (so I have 4 ballasts).
Thoughts? Does any of this make sense versus just saving the money and replacing the fixture?
MH, I do not think that the 175w is giving me as much light as I would like to have. I would prefer to bump this up to 250w. So first question; can you switch this up by simply replacing the ballasts and the bulbs or is there more to it than that? Is the wiring different? The socket different?
PCs, given that PCs are slowly going out of the market I would prefer to switch these out for T5s. I am not sure what the difficulty would be to wire and install something like this into the fixture or how many it would take to at least equal the 4 PCs I have now. Also would I need to add ballasts or could I reuse what I have. I think there is a Fulham Workhorse 5 driving each PC today (so I have 4 ballasts).
Thoughts? Does any of this make sense versus just saving the money and replacing the fixture?