Metal Halide Question

[chucklez]

At around 5pm I will be heading to the local schools dinner theater which features a live auction/silent auction event. Up for auction are metal halide lighting, and I was wondering if anyone could tell me if these are any good or not as I know next to nothing of MH.

The lights are 250 or 400 watt metal halide lamps with 120, 208, 240 or 277 volts.

They previously were used to light up the school cafeteria and school gymnasium.

Opinions? Value?

 

[saltyunderground]

You may not need any opinions when you see their size. The fixtures are usually huge on those types of lights.

 

[breutus]

well, the first thing I would think would be that they would be the wrong color spectrum if they were used to light up rooms in a school but i am not positve. You would want bulbs to be between 10,000 and 20,000 kelvins. from a school I would imagine they would be closer to 5,000 which is more in the red frequency. Now that does not mean anything the most expensive part of a MH system is the ballast (what fires the bulb up) and the socket/pendent for the bulb, you can always pick up the right spectrum bulb.

As far as value goes it hard for me to say I haven't enough experince in different ballast to give a good estimation, but i will tell you I paid 200 for a pretty bare bone setup with bulb and I have seen good systems run over a grand. MH in general for saltwater tanks are very good if you plan on keeping corals that need high lighting i have a 250 watt on my 75 gallon and it seems to make them happy I hope this gives you something to kick around, hopefully some of the more exper reefers will be able to give you a better thought on value on these types of systems
.

 

[SSTG]

Could be used for fuge or frag tank with the correct kelvin bulb installed.Ballast is part of light,which makes them very heavy.I'd be interested in a couple of them if they were cheap enough.

 

[chucklez]

I appreciate the thoughts, and if the equipment is the right price (next to nothing) I may pick some up. All depends tho being a charity option. Thanks guys, and I will mull it over while im there.

 

[DrBDC]

I have 3 400w fixtures that were from an indoor pool house I believe. Even if I didn't want to use the fixture I would still be able to take the ballast out and use it with another socket/reflector if I wanted. One is over my sump with an Iwasaki 6500K bulb and the other 2 are going over a growout tank I will be adding.