Which 250 watt MH bulb to get?

[jdieck]

Just another reminder that your ballast must match the magnetic ballast to the type of bulb. Standard ballasts are used for probe start bulbs (Mostly northamerican) You will need pulse start ballasts for most European bulbs although HQI ballasts work for pulse start due to their operating voltage most will overdrive the bulb with resultant increased par but reduced bulb life.
If you have the $$ I fully recommend going with electronic ballasts (IceCap or Hamilton my favorites). They will fire any type of bulb so you are not limited in the future when you may want to switch to other bulb type (And most of us do want to switch at certain point) besides the advantage of being smaller (saves space and easy to hide), lighter, less heat, somehow less power consumption and less magnetic and electric interference and less or no bulb flicker.

 

[tenshi]

Just another reminder that your ballast must match the magnetic ballast to the type of bulb. Standard ballasts are used for probe start bulbs (Mostly northamerican) You will need pulse start ballasts for most European bulbs although HQI ballasts work for pulse start due to their operating voltage most will overdrive the bulb with resultant increased par but reduced bulb life.

Also, neither the Ushio nor AB fires 100% reliably on a standard ballast. We normally recommend an HQI or pulse start.

So let me see if I get a Ushio bulb I would be best off with a "Pulse Start" ballast and not a HQI ballast? If I sorted from best to worst for Ushio SE bulb, it would be Pulse Start, Regular, and then HQI ballasts?

I don't think I'm going with an electronic ballast because you get a lower Par from the bulb, right?

Tenshi

 

[jdieck]

Probe start ballast will not work properly with the Ushio (German) Bulb. So if you select Ushio you will need to go either HQI, Electronic or Pulse start.
Electronic IceCap or Hamilton and Pulse start Magnetic will give you a similar par as both are designed to run the bulb at it's specification. Par wise you can select either.

If you want higher par then go with HQI although IMO the gain in par does not worth the higher bulb replacement cost mainly because the normal par will be enogh to keep SPS and Clams in a 24" deep aquarium. (note that the corals are mounted on the Rock which in some areas will be only 8 to 10 inches from the surface).
HQI will give you a higher PAR basically because it is designed to run double ended HQI bulbs that run at a higher voltage (It is not designed to run Pulse Start Bulbs), so by applying a higher voltage to the bulb it will run brighter, hotter and pull more current which in turn lowers it's life as much as 15 to 25%.

 

[MattM]

The issue is that some bulbs draw more current on start-up. A standard ballast may or may be able to provide enough current so the bulb may not fire all the time. Our experience has been that most 10K will fire on a standard ballast, but not all. After a 100 hours or so burn-in, they seem to fire much better. The 20K radiums will normally not fire on a standard ballast.

A pulse start ballast has a circuit that delivers an extra jolt of current on start-up to handle this problem. So technically, that is the right ballast to use with these bulbs.

An HQI ballast delivers that "extra jolt" all the time, to put it in non-technical terms, so it does over-drive a single-ended bulb a bit. However, the bulb life issue is usually not an issue because we tend to replace these bulbs well before their normal lifetime.

Aquarists will normally replace bulbs annually because they get dimmer and the color shifts slowly towards the yellow. If the bulb has a normal life of 10 years, who cares if an HQI ballast cuts it down to 5 years, or even 2?

 

[Anonymous]

You want the best? CoralVue's 10K on an electronic ballast. I threw my Ushio's and AB's away after getting these bulbs. NO MORE YELLOW!!! They burn a crisp white.

PAR values are very good for these bulbs. Check out the thread on Reefcentral where JB NY is testing the PAR values for the CoralVues bulbs and many other new bulbs (i.e. XM, PFO 13K, etc.) against the old standbuys on many different ballast.

Regards,

Brad