you are right! they are m59s. unfortunately the kits to convert them are around the same price as new digital ballasts these days. hopefully by the end of the week when my other ballasts show up I should be squared away
If you don’t mind me asking, which new ballasts did you end up going with? I find it’s relatively difffiuclt to find ones that go below 400. I have two spares currently but looking at maybe picking up a couple more
I found out also that 250W is very hard to find. I ended up ordering 3 of these 600 watt ballasts because they can run either 250w or 400w bulbs with that switch so I don't need to worry about a ballast again if I want to change intensities of light on the tank. they should get to me by the end of the week fingers crossed
dang so looking at the S50 kit and doing some research I should have purchased the HPS ballasts in the first place. here is the link and they are only $24 for the entire ballast
Thanks for all the work documenting your efforts. I thought I would mention that the 250w ballast in your shopping list is an ANSI M58 ballast which is exactly what is spec'd for Ushio SE 250w bulbs. I was running Hamilton bulbs on Icecap electronic ballasts but wanted to move away from the blue look so switched to Ushio 10k. Unfortunately, the Ushio seemed to flicker a bit on the Icecap. I decided to look for an M58 ballast and took a gamble on the Agrostar even though the site does not explicitly indicate M58. Glad to report that it is indeed an M58 and is driving the Ushio flicker free.thank you all! Back in the day in another life I grew plants and remember for some reason these remote ballasts had a higher yield than my digital ballasts. HTG supply looks like they are unloading all of their metal halide products at crazy low prices so I put together a shopping list to help anyone else out looking to put together a new system on the cheap. this is what I went with, got 3 of each
New 250w Ballast $35
New Socket and cord $6
New Hood $49 20"x15"
Then the bulb of your choice
