400 watt Metal Halides 14 K and 20K (BLV lamp pictures)

[Fatboy]

Three (3) month ago I changed my 250 watt Metal Halide lights. I decided to buy a Sfiligoi Infinity XR4 with 2 x 400 watt Metal Halides, 4 x 54 watt T5's and ACLS controllers.

The 400 watt bulbs are BLV 14.000 K (I think is the same thing as the aquaconnect bulb...), but I'm not very happy with the color. Basically, the light is "white" with almost no blue or purple tint.

A friend in Spain did some testing with the BLV lamps and he compared the 10K, the 14K and the 20K (test was done with 250 watt lamps in a Sfiligoi Infinity XR4 lamp with ACLS controllers)

Color of the BLV 10.000 K



Color of the BLV 14.000 K



Color of the BLV 20.000 K



Lux of the BLV 10.000 K



Lux of the BLV 14.000 K



Lux of the BLV 20.000 K



As you can see, the color of the 10 K and 14 K are almost indentical and there is almost no change in lux. These are 250 watt lamps but the color of the 14 K 400 watt is almost identical....... actually, it even looks more white.

This is how my tank looks with my light. It's very WHITE.......

I like the looks of the 20K but that bulb looses a "lot" of PAR and I don't want that to happen to me. I decided to change to 400 watt lamps because I wanted more PAR in the first place.

So my question is....... any recomendations on 400 watt SE bulbs that would be bluer but at the same time would have a good PAR ?

 

[BreadmanMike]

What type of ballasts does that fixture use? If it's standard m59's then if you switched to 20k XM's you would be getting about 47 more par. According to Sanjay's site.


I'm not sure what T5's you're using but the 20K XM's look great with the UVL SA's. You get the high blue spike from the XM's with that deep purple of the actinics. Looks awesome IMO!

 

[BreadmanMike]

Double...

 

[BreadmanMike]

Fatboy,

I googled that light and all it shows is HQI fixtures. Did you modify that for SE bulbs?

 

[Fatboy]

Aquaticaman74,

The ballast are electronic...... http://www.sfiligoi.it/acls_en.htm

Regarding the T5¡s, I don't see the brand but they look exactly the same as the Aqua-Medics Ocean Blue

 

[BreadmanMike]

The closes 20k bulb on Sanjay's site to the AquaConnect 14k is the Helios 20k. There is a difference of about 12 par.

Not sure if you have been to Sanjay's site but here is the link...

Sanjay's light pages .

I would just leave the T5 bulbs you have until it's time for a change, unless you want to try the Super Actinics from UVL. They are just like the VHO Super Actinics.