Metal Halides: Bulb choices and why?
- Thread starter sethsolomon
- Start date
HQI or Magnetic ballasts? It will matter. If it was the ones for sale on here, then they are real HQI M80, IIRC.
If you have a full HQI setup, then 14K phoenix are the best of the best. They are pretty cheap and you can run them for 2 years. Don't even consider anything else. Seriously.
20K radium suck in HQI, if you can even get them anymore, but are fantastic in 400W mogul applications - they are the best. 20K XM are fine on electronic ballasts and make good color, but are not where the Mogul Radiums or HQI Phoenix are - these are better for blue lower light tanks like mixed reef and softie tanks... tanks where people really would love something like a AI SOL Blue on steroids.
The 14K phoenix will not need supplemental lighting. If you want to run blues some too, then factor that in to your bulb choice. FWIW, I have some reef brite strips and you cannot even tell that they are on when the Phoenix are on - a waste of electricity and hardware.
If you are doing a hood, then these will stay cool if you vent/fan that thing well enough. If you don't, then you could have heat issues, but this will because of your hood and not because of the lights. My heaters run during the day a bit with 3x250w HQI over my 120G.
If you have a full HQI setup, then 14K phoenix are the best of the best. They are pretty cheap and you can run them for 2 years. Don't even consider anything else. Seriously.
20K radium suck in HQI, if you can even get them anymore, but are fantastic in 400W mogul applications - they are the best. 20K XM are fine on electronic ballasts and make good color, but are not where the Mogul Radiums or HQI Phoenix are - these are better for blue lower light tanks like mixed reef and softie tanks... tanks where people really would love something like a AI SOL Blue on steroids.
The 14K phoenix will not need supplemental lighting. If you want to run blues some too, then factor that in to your bulb choice. FWIW, I have some reef brite strips and you cannot even tell that they are on when the Phoenix are on - a waste of electricity and hardware.
If you are doing a hood, then these will stay cool if you vent/fan that thing well enough. If you don't, then you could have heat issues, but this will because of your hood and not because of the lights. My heaters run during the day a bit with 3x250w HQI over my 120G.
You can come by and look if you want. I have 14K phoenix running all day, every day - on M80 ballasts. I have some LED strips that we can fire up and you can see how the ones that I have don't really do much - I have some reef brites and panaroma pros. I also might be able to wire up some Super Actinic VHOs to compare those to the LEDs... but don't ask me to do this unless you REALLY want to buy more equipment or are able to focus and forget what they look like. 
If you come, bring one of the lumenarcs/whatever and ballast and I can show you how they will spread differently than the AquaMedics that I have - both will be fine on tanks like ours, but you might want to choose one over the other if you ever got a really wide or really deep tank. Each will shadow a bit differently too.
I also have different bulbs that we can put in and try out (I think, unless I gave them all to watercolorsguy a while back).
If you come, bring one of the lumenarcs/whatever and ballast and I can show you how they will spread differently than the AquaMedics that I have - both will be fine on tanks like ours, but you might want to choose one over the other if you ever got a really wide or really deep tank. Each will shadow a bit differently too.
I also have different bulbs that we can put in and try out (I think, unless I gave them all to watercolorsguy a while back).
Nope. Lighting is rarely the cause of algae issues since even the bluest of bulbs have enough green/yellow/red in them to grow most nuisance algae. Too much fuel and/or not enough crew are likely the issue. Probably 2 hours of light are enough for some hair, diatoms, cyano to soak up some N and P and grow.
Here is one of the 3 ballasts I have to run my 250 watt bulbs. I got them with reflectors and a single end, screw in socket. One ballast is an icecap HID. The other 2 look exactly the same but say "Vue technologies HID 250 watt" what bulbs should I run with them? Why is this all so confusing?
One is currently running with a used bulb, so I'm trying to buy a new bulb for it, and I've gotten 20 different answers for what I need. I can understand now why people are so reluctant to run MH!!
BTW I want a 20k look to match the LED panels I have.
Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things!
Are the ballasts heavy or light? The icecap could be either electronic or magnetic and I don't know about the Vue. They are labeled HID becuase they can fire any kind of HID bulb and are probably probe start which can fire nearly every type of bulb. Application specific ballasts like High Pressure Sodium or Hydrargyrum Quartz Iodide have their own ballasts that are labled as HPS or HQI, but the bulbs can also run off of generic probe start ballasts.
Buy Single Ended 250W Radium 20K for those ballasts - best of breed IMO. They aren't any more complicated than anything else once you dig in. There might be fewer bulb choices for MH than there are LED panels and you probably know the difference in the AIs, ReefBreeders, Maxxpect, China, etc. and you figured all of that out.
They will not look like your LEDs - no MH, T5 or whatever, ever will. They just look different - the blue is different, the white, etc. I am not saying that any will look better, or worse, they are just different. The corals will look different under them too. What you might have read is true... a photon is a photon and the coral or our eyes do not care where it came from, this is too much of a simplification. This is like saying that an organic does not care in which skimmer it bonds to a air bubble - which is technically true, but we all know that a sea clone, octopus, ASM or Bubble King all perform differently in trying to get that air to bond. I guess that I am just saying to expect them to look different.
Buy Single Ended 250W Radium 20K for those ballasts - best of breed IMO. They aren't any more complicated than anything else once you dig in. There might be fewer bulb choices for MH than there are LED panels and you probably know the difference in the AIs, ReefBreeders, Maxxpect, China, etc. and you figured all of that out.
They will not look like your LEDs - no MH, T5 or whatever, ever will. They just look different - the blue is different, the white, etc. I am not saying that any will look better, or worse, they are just different. The corals will look different under them too. What you might have read is true... a photon is a photon and the coral or our eyes do not care where it came from, this is too much of a simplification. This is like saying that an organic does not care in which skimmer it bonds to a air bubble - which is technically true, but we all know that a sea clone, octopus, ASM or Bubble King all perform differently in trying to get that air to bond. I guess that I am just saying to expect them to look different.
Thanks jda! I just pulled the trigger on that exact bulb on marine depot.com. I'll be trying it over my 40b for a few months before the 210 is set up. I've got it mixing with LED panels, so I'm hoping for the best of both worlds.
I believe they are electronic because they are far lighter than the dual 175 magnetic ballast I have.
The HID vs HQI thing is what was throwing me off. I'm just in tank frustration mode these last couple of days due to several issue compounding over the weekend. I'm sure I'll get over it... But sorry to sound like sour puss!!
Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things!
I believe they are electronic because they are far lighter than the dual 175 magnetic ballast I have.
The HID vs HQI thing is what was throwing me off. I'm just in tank frustration mode these last couple of days due to several issue compounding over the weekend. I'm sure I'll get over it... But sorry to sound like sour puss!!
Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things!