Metal Halide ? XM or Hamilton

[cthetoy]

Re: 250watt 20K radium

Re: 250watt 20K radium

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7217642#post7217642 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by springeri
Currently I'm running 250 watt 20K radium. It's nice, but I thought going 15k or 14k would do better in terms of coral growth for me.

I'm really considering going DE instead on SE.

But I'm not sure if that's beneficial. I was told that 250watt DE is almost as strong as 400watt MH...

I need to do much more homework before making a decision.

thanks all....

I had DE but now im switching back to SE. Reason is that 250 watts DE bulbs are not meant to work with Electronic Ballast ie Ice Cap but on the PFO HQI (M80) ballasts but then this ballast uses 350 watts vs 250 watts. The top 3 brightest bulbs on Sanjay's test database all were on the yellow side even though they were 10k bulbs. It you want a bluer/white appearance on the DE with the M80 Ballast then the PPFD ratings are lower than what you can get with the SE bulbs. Use the DE bulbs on the Ice Cap ballast and they will rank near the middle to the bottom compared to the SE bulbs. You will get more PPFD per watts on a SE bulb than the DE bulbs.

 

[piberoptikz]

my XM 10K DE rocks!

 

[ScotchMaster]

I had a 250 watt DE XM15K that I got with my pendant and it was horrible....The 130 watts of powercompact I have were almost brighter! The thing burnt out after 6 months