lighting article in FAMA 4/02

[esmithiii]

Intenstity is not strictly a function of wattage. Watt for watt, metal halide bulbs are more intense than any other form of lighting, PC lamps being second. A good example is this: Why not put 4 100W incandescent bulbs over your tank? Thats 400 watts!

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

claims that an Icecap 660 ballast can run 4 Verilux 4' 32W NO bulbs at almost 90W each.

Are you saying that the 30W NO bulbs will put out 90W?

The fact of the matter is that there are no really inexpensive and effective lighting solutions for reefs out there. There are effective solutions and there are inexpensive ones, but not both.

For my 180, I have over $900 in lighting alone, not including the time and money spent building my hood! (I have 3x400W MH + 4x96W PC Actinic)

NO lighting is great for growing coraline algae, but not corals.

Ernie

 

[Big R]

Running NO bulbs on a IceCap ballast to produce near VHO output is nothing new. I was doing that years ago. I would say that it is effective and inexpensive; atleast relatively speaking.

R

 

[Bodine]

One thing I could never understand is there is little difference in price between florescent tubes...

4 ft VHO tubes can be had for around 25 bucks and NO florescents for 23.00 at petwhareshouse
Both are T-12 and made by URI..

As for 12 dollar tubes thats a savings of only 48 bucks...chump change in this hobby and unless your really a reefer-on-a-budget get the most out of your ballast.

Besides dont NO tubes burn out faster on these ballast?

I would never recommend florescent over halide unless you want FO

 

[KJHawley]

I'm about to set up my first saltwater tank (a 75 gal. FOWLR tank, eventually w/ clams & other photosynthetic inverts), & after reading a lot about lighting (here & elsewhere) had basically decided to go w/ metal halide & PC actinics. However, the author of the article mentioned above claims that an Icecap 660 ballast can run 4 Verilux 4' 32W NO bulbs at almost 90W each. She recommends this setup over PCs, but getting almost 360W out of a $180 ballast and $12 bulbs makes this seem like a pretty good system all by itself. In fact, since this article came out I've noticed several people on the trading boards offering to swap their 2x175W metal halides for an Icecap setup. Has anyone tried this? Would anyone recommend this over metal halides, or even PCs?

 

[Adam1]

KJHawley,

Icecap ballasts overdrive normal output lamps and underdrive VHO's, that is why NO's on an Icecap put out nearly as much light as VHO's.

NO lamps may not last quite as long, and NO lamps that produce a pleasing color may be nearly as expensive as VHO's. For this reason, I stick with VHO's. I do run an icecap 660 with four 4' NO lamps on my refugium.

I am currently maintaining my 135 reef tank (6' long) lit with four 6' VHO's. It contains many soft corals, many lower light hard corals (blastomussa, alveopora, caulastrea and euphyllias) and even a couple SPS (montipora, pocillipora and oxypora). All are growing well and have excellent coloration.

I do keep the SPS up high, but everything else is scattered.

Basically, my point is that if you want to set up your 75 gallon tank with and IceCap and whatever kind of lamp you want, you will have alot of flexibility in what you want to keep. If (read: when) you are bitten by the serious SPS bug, then an upgrade may be in order.

Also, my 225 has 3x400w MH, and I feel like I can keep a wider variety of corals under the VHO's. Far more animals have suffered from over illumination under the 400w MH than have suffered from under illumination under the VHO's.

HTH,

Adam

[ April 04, 2002: Message edited by: Adam ]</p>