Best Ballast for 250W Radiums

[butts182]

What is the best all-around ballast to run for 250W Radiums? I recently bought a Hamilton fixture, but did not upgrade the ballast. I need to upgrade the ballast to either a HQI or Electronic ballast to run Radiums. Which is all-around better? And what particular ballast do you recommend? Thanks.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

I always just used an ARO Ballast from Hello Lights. Worked great for me.

 

[Troylee]

pfo is the best there magnetic hqi ballast "m80" but they can't be found any more unless it's used they quit making them for some reason...:tongue: i have a dual pfo 250 but im not sure if i would let it go for that reason above......European bulbs have a higher wattage radiums fire correctly at like 280 watts or something like that...you can notice the difference most tanks you see with radiums are real blue but when there fired correctly there a pure crisp white....hth..

 

[Paul_N]

Get the Lumatek switchable ballast. They have 4 settings on them: 250w, 250 HQI, 400w and super lumens. I put a killawatt on it for the (2) 250 setting and I got 280 watts for the 250 setting and 310 for the HQI setting.

 

[myzislow]

old school m80 magnetic is THE best ballast for the radium. I rewired my sifiligoi with one and couldn't be happier! The thing looks older than a dinosaur tho haha.

 

[SaraB]

I ran my 250K Radiums on Blue Wave ballasts with good success.

 

[EliteReefs]

as said above the ballast that bublb was built to run on is a old school magnetic ballast. the good nes is you can buy the raw ballast for 40-60 bucks. might be ugly and you have to know how to wire but they work great. with that said however i recently switched to gallaxy ballast for all my radiums and love it. i seem to get less life out of them but i like the par and color i get so it was worth the trade off.

 

[UncleJT]

pfo is the best there magnetic hqi ballast "m80" but they can't be found any more unless it's used they quit making them for some reason...:tongue:

Sadly they went out of business a few years ago thanks to an LED lawsuit fiasco when LED's just started entering the hobby. It was a mess.

 

[Jeepguy242]

+1 on the lumatek ballast, i believe that lumatek and galaxy are made by the same company...

i have the lumatek's, ant they look great, nice crisp white, with just enough of a hint of blue that all my colors pop!!

 

[john90009]

i run them off my gallaxy dual 250 watt ballast and they r purtttyyyy- dont be afraid of how people say they wont fire or are to windex blue. no windex blue here. i went from a 6 unit t-5 that had 4 blue pluses and 2 pinks and this 250 watts are brighter whiter but make the blues and greens and oranges pop way more.