An electronic ballasts will ignite and run DE bulbs fine. It’s really the mixing up of probe and pulse start magnetic ballasts with their bulbs that causes problems.
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
So would I need a pulse or probe start ballast for my bulbs? On RC someone just told me that I can run them on electronic ballasts. They would supply them with about 248-ish watts, thus, making them appear bluer. He suggests getting different bulbs, though. It makes more sense financially.
You can run any DE bulb or 250w 20k Radium on electronic ballast (or probe start magnetic), but they will not have as much output/PAR, color usually shifts bluer. There is no life extension with this.
It works. It is not spec to how the bulbs were designed. If you don't need the extra output, then no big deal.
14Ks will help your corals to produce real colors that 20Ks won't
There is nothing such the "true 20K bulb". K numbers are more like a reference to every brand in order to determinate warmer to cooler colors. Yes, if you are particular like many of us the best way is to see tanks lit by them in order to pick the best color bulb. They all going to give you what T5s and LEDs can't! I can tell you that any halide will bring pigments that any other artificial light source won't. Halides are the best for that! 20K bulbs aren't dim, they are just bluer. Halides need the right ballast to be used with each bulb and that is one of the most important aspects when choosing! Any light source, if not used correct or adapted to that situation will bleach corals. Windex is just an online expression that we all see different, I guess.Phoenix 14k bulbs appear to be true 20k bulbs. These kelvin numbers are always off. I've done some research on the Ushios that I ordered yesterday and some say they are whiter than the 14k Phoenix but they make corals pop more due to the actinic/purple hue. Some say they are bluer than the Phoenix. It is just terrible. I really have to buy different bulbs every month until I find what I like. There is no point in asking other people. I've read the wildest claims and descriptions. Some say that 20k bulbs will kill everything off due to being too dim. Metal halides are so bright, even dim 20k bulbs will bleach SPS if they aren't used to that amount if PAR/PUR. Then I've seen Phoenix 14k bulbs described as Windex blue bulbs. I guess these people have never held a Windex bottle in their hands.
I've seen diagrams of 14k bulbs with kelvin numbers in the 20k region. This is very confusing. I thought kelvin is a fixed unit. Yes, the ballast discussion is a big part of the confusion. I can tell for sure that people with M80 ballasts always perceive their bulbs to be whiter. What I've read about the Ushios is that they have a slight purple tint with a hint of blue. That should be what I'm looking for. Whether ot, not that is 20k doesn't matter to me. And if they're dimmer, perfect! That means I can increase my photoperiod and lower my fixture without killing the few corals I have left. When I think of Windex blue I think of a really greenish-blue just like the Blue Plus bulbs from ATI.
I’ve gotta be honest. In my experience with halides I’ve only used 3 bulbs personally
Radiums
XM10k
Hamilton 14k
XM are gone now. Can’t find those anywhere reliably.
Radiums look cool but to be honest, at nearly $90 a bulb I just won’t use them anymore. With that said, I have two brand new ones in my reserve stash.
The Hamilton 14k are usable. They’re not the prettiest color rendering bulbs it seems. But they put out more than adequate amounts of par (I’m getting 400 on the sand bed 36” away from the reflectors, 250 watt bulbs) and are a full spectrum bulb. Best part is they go on sale all the time for $44 directly through Hamilton.
I’ve never used Ushios before. Just couldn’t see the point when Hamilton’s are $20 cheaper
After 12000K it's just marketing.
Also K values w these punctuated spectrum lights (more correctly CCT) can show different looks even w identical K (CCT) values.
After 12000K it's just marketing.
Also K values w these punctuated spectrum lights (more correctly CCT) can show different looks even w identical K (CCT) values.
I've been running 2 x 14K Phoenix on M80 ballasts for not even a week and the color is just meh. It's a nice crisp white but all my corals look brown. When the bulb starts it goes from yellow to super blue (this is where I'd like it to stay) but once they run at full power they become white. Would 20k bulbs make my corals pop again or is this "brownish" look just a thing with metal halides? I know that many supplement with LEDs to make their tanks pop. I supplement with 2 T5's (actinic, blue) but it doesn't really help because the MHs are so bright and powerful, they overpower the T5s. Any thoughts on this?
I bought them for 56 dollars each. That's 12 dollars more than the Hamilton bulb. I don't think that this is that much. I agree, 90 dollars for a bulb, yea that's a little bit too much. As far as PAR readings, I'm not a subscriber of the "more is better" mentality. Tidal Gardens grows SPS under as little as 150 PAR. My T5's didn't produce a lot of PAR (very old fixture with cheap reflectors), that I'm fairly certain, but most of my corals (except the few sps I had) grew at a fascinating rate. My hammer coral went from 2 to 6 heads in the first year. It was insane. I'm not big on SPS, more LPS. I'll get 3-4 SPS corals for my new tank and that's about it. I think 2x 250W 20K lamps will produce way more PAR that I will ever need.
Can you elaborate on that?
According to a few people on RC, it's a Windex blue bulb lol
Specifically on ushios, I’ve read the DE and SE bulbs are entirely different animals, with favor going strongly toward the DE variety.
I don’t believe more par is better, but before you hit photoinhibition, more is indeed better. I’m sure I’m simplifying it, and 3 specific pieces of mine actually are doing poorer under so much light, but otherwise the rest exploded in growth with increased par.
If you’re going for LPS, I’d drop it to 20k 150 watt bulbs honestly and shoot for 150 par absolute max.
Let the bulbs break in and let your corals adapt to them, you can tweak colors with trace elements and nutrients, not by just blasting things with blue/uv leds
Past 12000k doesn't seem to be universally recognized.. First I really noticed the Spectra graph had 20000k on it.What I understand is that beyond the infinity sign, you can't give it a number. So everything beyond 12k could be anything you want. But at the end of your post, you referred me to an actual 20k bulb which looks just as blue as many other 20k bulb pictures I've seen. So if anything past 12k is just marketing, how can there be an actual 20k bulb? I'm a bit confused. I'll have to read your post a couple of times haha.
What is color temperature?
- Color temperature is a way to describe the light appearance provided by a light bulb. It is measured in degrees of Kelvin (K) on a scale from 1,000 to 10,000.
Close up of the CIE 1960 UCS. The isotherms are perpendicular to the Planckian locus, and are drawn to indicate the maximum distance from the locus that the CIE considers the correlated color temperature to be meaningful: Δ u v = ± 0.05 {\displaystyle \Delta uv=\pm 0.05}