Will this MH/pc fixture work??

I live in GA and I have seen some of AquaticCO's work @ Imagine-Ocean www.imagine-ocean.com and they are amazing.  Very clean and cool.  Let him know Chris Gallagher from ARC sent ya.

Ask for Bruno at Advanced Lighting.  I just bought enough sheet for my 125 and my father-in-law's 70 gal.  It's very good stuff (same as what you'll buy on line) and only about $2.50 per sq ft.  That's under $10 for the reflector you're looking at.  It's easy to bend the stuff to whatever shape you might like using wood boards (if you go this route and can't figure out how to get straight nice bends ask here).

Mark's like my straight man... I bought a couple ballasts from Commercial Lighting Supply this week too.  They are a local dealer of Fulham ballasts.  Fulham are great electronic ballasts for any type of fluorescent lighting.  But you said you want to just use the PC's you've got, so you may not need a fulham ballast.

I had quotes from Wesco here in SLC for 175 watt core and coil MH ballasts at right around $38.  But if you're getting the Ushio bulb you'll need either the electronic which you mention (Ice Cap) or a pulse start core and coil which might be (guessing here) $10-15 more then the probe start... so like $50 - $55.

Adam -

I only did a quick search, so I don't know if all the parts are there, but check out this link:

http://www.championlighting.com/e/env/0001IZxV5SFwoWkqB40U7v 5/Products/Lighting/lighting.html?link=/Products/Lighting/ic mh.html

For a power cord you buy a $3 grounded 25' extension cord and cut off the recepticle!

Well, here's what I think I'll go with. Im still new to all the MH stuff so please tell me if i'm buying something bad or if i'm missing something.

24" Aluminum composite fixture (AquaticCo)       $60

Ventilation fan (AquaticCo)    $13

IceCap retro kit        $200

(includes 175 W electronic ballast, 10,000K Ushio bulb, mogul ceramic socket with stainless steel mount (5kv), 1 power cord

24" polished optical reflector    $24

 

Am I missing anything???

Thanks for all the input. I don't know what I would do without this forum. So everyone thinks a 175W 10,000K MH + 2x65 Watt pc actinics will be enough light for my small 29 gallon tall aquarium. Enough light for anemones, acros and clams?? And I will never need to upgrade my lighting again  ???

One last question, should I even use actinic pc as a supplement, or should I just get a 14,000K or 20,000K bulb?

Thanks, Adam

Edited by BananaTropics

I would agree with Adam, you will like having the actinics & a 10000K MH.  You could go with the single 20000K MH, but then you cannot stagger the light times and you can see the different colors between the actinics and the MH.  I would run the actinics for an hour or two before the MH comes on and then leave them on for an hour or two after the Mh goes off.  There are not many P.C. that are true actinic, most are just blue.  But I do not know which ones are true.  Can someone else help with that one?  For that and other reasons, I like VHO's over P.C.'s.

Does anyone know if any power compacts are TRUE actinic?  What manufactures?

I have a couple true actinics, but I do NOT like them as much as I like my new blue pc bulbs.  I got my blues from Scroll, I think they are like panasonic brand but I'm not sure.  If it were me, I wouldn't look for true actinic lights.  I have a blue and an actinic in a fixture, maybe I will bring it to the meeting so you can see the two bulbs side by side.

Adam

jfinch wrote: Blue light just make's 'em blue.  Actinics make them GLOW.

I'll disagree with that.  The reason I like my blues is because they seem to make my coral glow more than my actinics did.  Also, they have increased growth rate, I think.  But I may be wrong.  Somehow I think my actinics just didn't give the light that the blues do.

Adam

My experience has been exactly what hellolights.com is saying.

And it appears that there IS an actinic pc bulb afterall.

Edited by jfinch