neat lighting trick

[cee]

I downgraded my lighting today to 250 W 10k for the summer. The 1200 W of lighting was generating too much heat, so I decided to do a little test. I bought the correct capacitors off ebay for a M58 ballast and replaced them with my M59 capacitors, but used the same transformer. Since the only real difference between the transformers is the wire size (to handle the different currents), it works fine as I suspected it would. Also, according to my light meter, I'm getting more LUX out of the 10k bulbs than the 20k 400 W bulbs. The bulbs are the Plus bulbs off of ebay for $25 apiece, and the caps cost me $10 plus shipping for 5 pieces. Since my tank is shallow (18"), I felt I could get away with this and not sacrifice color in my corals.

Dave

[rcmike]

So are you saying that you can just change the capacitor to a 250 W one? The actual ballasts are the same? I upgraded my 250 W MH ballasts to 400 W ones but I was thinking about going back to 250 W since the growth and color was about the same before the switch. I may have to give that a try. I used one of the 250 W on another tank and gave the other away. The 250 W bulbs are a little cheaper and there seems to be more selection as well.

[cee]

That's all I did and it fired on one bulb. I'll update you on whether the others fire, but I don't expect any problems. If anything, the ballasts should run cooler. I wouldn't try it on anything other than the probe starts, though, 'cause I don't know enough about what's in the ignitor.

Dave

[RCS]

When I was shopping for lights for my prop facility, I had been searching for 400w since they seemed to be rather standard. After doing some comparisons between power consumption and actual light output, I decided to stick with 250w all the way around, since the PAR was similar to most 400w and the energy use was a lot lower. I had been getting good growth from my 250s as it was.

Dave, how do you like the PLUS lights? I just ordered 4 of them off Ebay (2 14k and 2 20k) since they were one of the few I found that were Universal burn.

[cee]

Standard 15uF draws 220W at the bulb, 17uF (12% more current) draws 240W. I've not had the bulbs long enough to form an opinion, but they're definately typical of 10ks. Didn't want to go with the 20k or 14k; not enough PAR for my SPS, IMO, esp. since they haven't been tested.

Dave

[RCS]

I like the color of the 14k for my SPS, which is why I went with those ones. The 20k will be strictly for Zoanthids, which I'm thinking will be powerful enough for good color and growth. I was tempted to try out some 10k strictly for SPS growth as well, but there's always that option if I decide to work more with them as well as opposed to the softies and LPS I'm dealing with now.

Keep in touch and let me know if you find anything odd with them. A few people have pointed out they have a seemingly low CRI (65 I believe I've seen on the 10), but I don't know how applicable that would be for our purposes...I doubt it would actually affect output. Perhaps the other mainstream manufacturers either measure theirs differently? Or is it maybe more subjective than that?

[awcurl]

I used pulse bulbs on my frag tank.They were 175 watt 10k SE. I had good growth but the corals browned up. The other issue I had with them was that after about 2 months the outer bulb developed cracks near the center around the inner bulb.

[RCS]

Art, were they the universal burn or the horizontal burn bulbs?

Down the road, I may just take the entire fixture apart and build separate pendants for them to run horizonatally anyway, but hopefully the Plus bulbs will fit the bill for the time being. They were cheap, but not that cheap that spending a bit more for a "brand name" bulb wouldn't make sense...

Do you think the cracks were the result of poor construction (thin glass?) or maybe water splashed on them or something of the sort?

[cee]

OK, it works on one ballast and not on the other two (very yellow). Not sure why that is, except the one that works produces a higher voltage at the bulb than the others. The bulb that burns true I'm happy with, though.

Dave

[cee]

OK, these bulbs are quite nice on a 250W M58 ballast with a wee bit of overdrive. Pure white and minimal if any hint of yellow. However, time will tell the true story...

Dave