Which ballast makes your Radiums burn best?

[oscar.millan]

Question is, which ballast are you using to power your radiums?

Which ballast does it best?

Playing with a few options, my old school peeps keep telling me to stick to Galaxy. Personally I like Lumatek.

Your thoughts?

[gcarroll]

I use Galaxy Select-A-Watt. BTW, they are made in the same factory as the Lumatek.

[spicytuna]

I love the color my 150w radium puts out on a galaxy select-a-watt ballast. I did a lot of research before choosing a ballast to run my radium, and I'm very pleased with the results. My bulb burns very white but my corals have more pop then they did under a Phoenix 14k.

Sunlight supply does not offer very much specific information on there ballast. Most people think the lumatek dimmable and galaxy select-a-watt are the same ballast. From SLS's product description, I only got the impression that the big differance was, the lumatek is able to be remotely located(as in 65' away from the lamp) and the galaxy has more CPU power as in detecting what type of bulb it has and firing it correctly and detecting multiple voltages. Other then that, they seem to be the same thing.

I personally like the way the galaxy fires a bulb. It turns on so slow you can't even hear the bulb ignite. The first time I seem it fire up I thought maybe something was wrong because it wasn't coming on. Takes a good 10 seconds to fire a bulb, and then gradually lights it up to full power.

Overall I love this ballast. When I switched to the galaxy, I was running the stock current-USA ballast about 4yrs old(sunpark) with a 150w Phoenix 14k about 6 months old. I wanted to test the ballast on my Phoenix bulb before trying my radium out. I was blown away by how the galaxy performed. Not only was Phoenix brighter, but it ran at a whole differant color then before(originally a very monotone blue, now a crisp white with blue fluorescence).

One observation that caught my attention immediately is that the galaxy ran my bulbs a lot hotter then my old ballast. My tank stays at a solid 81/80 day/night, and it's been this way for 4+ years. With the galaxy my tank was now hitting 84f during the day. So I installed a fan to come on with my light fixture and that solved my temp issues. The bonus with that is I now have more evap and dose more kalk and less 2part which saves me money, and my stonies are growing like crazy.

[James77]

Best and ideal ballast is the M80 magnetics. Aquamedic sells the Reeflex cube, which I now have, and it is a great ballast. It has a strange plug on the ballast, but an adaptor can be bought for it or you can quite easily wire in your own. I just retro'd a SLS female adapter ot it....it was about 10 small screws to ope the outer housing, then one nut to get access to the connectors.

Next best is any of the select a watt ( Lumatek, Galaxy, LuxCore) on HQI.

[GSMguy]

M-80 for 250w radiums.

[DownwardDawg]

Hamilton Technology also makes an M80 ballast.

[oscar.millan]

Great feedback everyone, keep the comments coming.

By the way this is for my cube which will run a 20k Radium, 400w, on a Coralvue reflector.

[spicytuna]

Great feedback everyone, keep the comments coming.

By the way this is for my cube which will run a 20k Radium, 400w, on a Coralvue reflector.

Here's a tank running 400w radiums on coralvue ballast

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2023909

I've seen it in person, and it's absolutely jaw dropping.


When I was researching ballast, the Hamilton and aqua medic were on my list. A light guru advised me that those brands usually use whatever cheap Chinese magnetic ballast they can find at the time that specs to m80/m81 for internals, so it's hit or miss what you actually get. Not all m80/m81's are created equal, it's really just an American standard for matching bulb to ballast.

[DownwardDawg]

I went with the Hamilton because I used their retro-fit light. I had made up my mind to buy the Aquamedic Reeflex Cube before I bought the Hamilton. Whichever you choose, I would certainly choose one of the M80 ballasts.