MH Lighting - switching from SE to DE

[BraenDead]

Recently I got a new fish (thalassoma lutescens) which likes to splash the surface of the water a bit. So far he has soaked my SE MH bulbs twice, once causing the bulb to crack. Thankfully I was present when this happened and turned the power off immediately to the light, preventing UV burn. The second time thankfully the bulb did not crack. After the two splashes and losing a $70 bulb, I am nervous to leave these as-is and don't want to keep losing bulbs.

So, this brings my plan to change from metal halide 250W SE bulbs to 250W DE bulbs. I am planning to use the following and am looking for opinions:
- 1 Sunlight Supply Dual Galaxy 250W Electronic Ballast
- 2 Sunlight Supply LumenMax 3 Pendants
- 2 Reeflux 10k DE bulbs

I know that the electronic ballast will underdrive the bulbs but I would prefer to keep the electrical consumption down a bit (compared to HQI ballasts) and this will hopefully extend bulb life a bit. Also, I am hoping the better reflector will offset slight loss of light intensity from the electric ballast compared to an HQI ballast. I have never seen the 10k reeflux DE bulbs but I loved my SE reeflux 10k bulbs and am hoping they will be similar.

Any thoughts on this plan? Anything you would recommend I do differently?

Bob

 

[jc9394]

Ice Cap ballast instead of Galaxy? I'm considering changing my Blue Wave to Ice Cap ballast.

 

[BraenDead]

I chose the Galaxy over the IceCap for a couple reasons:
1. It comes with an enclosure with heat sinks and on/off switch
2. It doesn't require any wiring and uses the same plug as the reflectors
3. The Galaxy seems to have had positive feedback from what I have read on here

Bob

 

[slavearm]

The galaxy also runs the bulbs at 280W instead of 250 like the icecap. Not quite HQI levels, but a nice compromise.

 

[jc9394]

Cool, I guess I will get a Galaxy instead of Ice Cap.