Real good bulb or crappy ballast

[acrodave]

I have a current-usa sunpod 150w hqi. I have been running a phoenix 14k 150w bulb in it for the last year and am very happy with it .. nice color good growth. Well now that my corals have grown out . Im looking for color out of them. I tryed a sps bulb in a 20K..Well it looked bad it was makred 20k but looked 10-6700k. So i put my phoenix back in. Well now i got a AB 20k payed 100$ for it was hopeing to be impressed. After putting it in last night i see no diff. in the AB vs the phoenix..So the ? is is the ballast in the current light just that bad or is the phoenix bulb just as good as what evey one says about. I would rather pay 59$ vs 89 any day

 

[fishdoc11]

The Pheonix has a lot of blue ( ie alot of light in the 450nm spectrum ) so I wouldn't doubt that the 2 bulbs looked similar. You might have a look at Sanjay's data and see if you can find the 2 bulbs you have and compare them:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/sea...reated&sort_order=normal&Subject=Sanjay+Joshi
Chris

 

[cee]

Any bulb, if overdriven, will drift in color temperature towards the lower end. Thus your SPS bulb, even though "rated" at 20k, will burn more "yellow" or more towards the 10k color temperature on your ballast. That is why I like my CoralVue ballasts - I can "tweak" the color temperature of the bulb by controlling how hard I drive it. Just compare spectrums on Sanjay's site for the same bulb on different ballasts and you'll see what I mean. Some are more prone to do this than others.

Dave

 

[acrodave]

do you really think that a no name ballast would over drive my bulbs? if anything i would think not enuff.

 

[ct_vol]

I haven't read any poor reviews on Current's 150w ballast, though their 250w ballast is a different story... I was always pleased with my little Sunpod over my Aquapod, and I'm going back to it for my LPS...

My favorite bulb for the 150w DE's has always been Phoenix... I have a Current 150w 20k unopenned that I was going to try to see if I liked the color (got it cheap)... The next bulb I plan to see about is the Radium 150w DE's, though the color is not as nice as their 250w SE's, its still supposed to be pretty sweet...

 

[acrodave]

Dont get me wrong i like the new bulb.and they say after 2years it only loses 25 %...im just looking for something that just makes them glow.. i had the current 14k and went to the phoenix 14k and saw a huge diff. you will have to let me know what the current 20k looks like ...maybe im not gettng the blue i want because i dont run any actinic so i guess for just bulb alone its doing a good job

 

[edwar050]

I know your looking only at halides as an option but maybe you could suppliment with actinic T-5.

 

[acrodave]

no room with outbuying a new light.. i have a halide allready. its a sunpod single 150w hqi the tank is only 25 gal

 

[ct_vol]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12868247#post12868247 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by acrodave
no room with outbuying a new light.. i have a halide allready. its a sunpod single 150w hqi the tank is only 25 gal

Time for an upgrade... lol