Tank Pics (FRAGS) New Corals and Old
- Thread starter MaryBebo
- Start date
Tomoko Schum
New member
Hi Mary,
Your tank and corals are looking great! It looks like you got rid of cyano.
Tomoko
Your tank and corals are looking great! It looks like you got rid of cyano.
Tomoko
MaryBebo
Premium Member
Hummm... It's the same ballast that ( Greg ) the fishman set me up with, when I first started. I have no clue what brand it is.
I first started off with Hamilton 20K MH 400W
When I changed out the bulb I tried the 14K Hamilton 400W
I then went to the 20K XM about 3 mo. ago. 400W
It's one single bulb with the reflector. This one (20K XM) as you can tell is alot bluer than the first 20K Hamilton 400W was.
I first started off with Hamilton 20K MH 400W
When I changed out the bulb I tried the 14K Hamilton 400W
I then went to the 20K XM about 3 mo. ago. 400W
It's one single bulb with the reflector. This one (20K XM) as you can tell is alot bluer than the first 20K Hamilton 400W was.
Tomoko Schum
New member
Hey Kyle,
Forgive me for butting in.
I love 20K MH XM, too. Philip introduced me to these bulbs about three years ago. Then John Newby had them over a number of his tanks until recently. You probably was looking right at them when you were in John's shop.
XM 20K starts out really blue, but in a month or two it mellows (loses the strong blue spike) and bring out really nice colors in corals. It held the nice colors for a year without a problem for me (Dr. Sanjay Joshi said that we could simply lower the light fixture and use MH bulbs a lot longer than the commonly believed 6 to 12 months since a lot of bulbs do not have "the spectrum shift" after initial shift in blues.) Then I switched to Phoenix 14K when the bulbs still good simply because I wanted to try Phoenix. Phoenix bulbs seem to bring out yellow and green a bit more, but it is generally whiter. My HQI ballast and electronic ballast from DIY reef both fire XM bulbs without any problem.
Tomoko
Forgive me for butting in.
I love 20K MH XM, too. Philip introduced me to these bulbs about three years ago. Then John Newby had them over a number of his tanks until recently. You probably was looking right at them when you were in John's shop.
XM 20K starts out really blue, but in a month or two it mellows (loses the strong blue spike) and bring out really nice colors in corals. It held the nice colors for a year without a problem for me (Dr. Sanjay Joshi said that we could simply lower the light fixture and use MH bulbs a lot longer than the commonly believed 6 to 12 months since a lot of bulbs do not have "the spectrum shift" after initial shift in blues.) Then I switched to Phoenix 14K when the bulbs still good simply because I wanted to try Phoenix. Phoenix bulbs seem to bring out yellow and green a bit more, but it is generally whiter. My HQI ballast and electronic ballast from DIY reef both fire XM bulbs without any problem.
Tomoko
Tomoko Schum
New member
The current set up came with an AquaMedic HQI ballast, but I was using a 250W Reef Fanatic electronic ballast previously. AquaMedic HQI ballast is probably an M81 type ballast. The same bulbs burn brighter on it than on the electronic ballast, but the HQI ballast are noisy as you know. I like electronic ballasts. Sooner or later, I'd like to switch to the electronic ballast. It should be a very simply switch.
Tomoko
Tomoko
But the Phoenix 14K only comes in a double ended bulb (HQI).Buzz and I are going to rebuild my canopy next month and put in new reflectors and sockets .So after seeing my coral under Mary's 20k XM bulb ,then that is what will be put in the new canopy.Thanks for the help Mary. Your photo of the coral that u got from me made the decision on my bulb choose.The coral was brown in my tank.It has a very nice pink color in yours.I am not putting HQI reflectors in because they produce more heat than the mogul screw in bulbs , that is the reason for the rebuild .My bulbs now are 7 in. off the water surface and they need to be 10 to 12 inches off the water surface .In the middle of last summer my temp has seen 86 degrees and that very night it was back to 79 degrees so I was fighting those white spots of my regal tang all last summer .
Tomoko Schum
New member
XM 20K and Phoenix bulbs will produce very nice colors. Mary's bulb must be pretty new or the photo is coming out a bit too blue. I suspect the pink hammer is not as deep pink in person as the picture show, but it will be much pinker under a 20K XM than under a 10K MH and PC actinic03 combination.
8Ball's Coralvue 20K SE bulbs produced exact same coloration as my XM 20K DE bulbs. XM looks the same whether DE or SE. Coralvue bulbs are a lot cheaper, though.
Tomoko
8Ball's Coralvue 20K SE bulbs produced exact same coloration as my XM 20K DE bulbs. XM looks the same whether DE or SE. Coralvue bulbs are a lot cheaper, though.
Tomoko
kng
New member
Tomoko,
Did you say you stopped using the 250w Reef Fanatic HQI Electronic Ballast ? Any reason? This looks like a pretty good buy: http://diyreef.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=84&products_id=128
I've always used Icecap ballasts, but as you know, they won't fire XM bulbs.
By the way, I've currently use the Phoenix 14K but supplement with one T5 actinic because it's not blue enough.
Anybody know if Coralvue comes in DE?
Did you say you stopped using the 250w Reef Fanatic HQI Electronic Ballast ? Any reason? This looks like a pretty good buy: http://diyreef.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=84&products_id=128
I've always used Icecap ballasts, but as you know, they won't fire XM bulbs.
By the way, I've currently use the Phoenix 14K but supplement with one T5 actinic because it's not blue enough.
Anybody know if Coralvue comes in DE?
Tomoko Schum
New member
That's a real pink hammer, then.
I don't know if SE bulbs run cooler than DE bulbs in the fixture with glass shields. I like the brightness of my DE bulbs. A DE bulb is supposedly a bit more efficient than a SE bulb but there are a lot of varied opinion on that.
Hard-Rock, are you running DE bulbs without a shield?
I also use fans on my tanks. My 120 has a 6" fan over the sump and I had to add another fan over my display since the temp in the summer was going up near 86 during the day (my programmable AC thermostat is set to go up to 86 in summer when no one is at home). I was going to install a chiller, but Eric Borneman told me to try the fan on the display. Once I put a fan on the display, the temp rarely goes above 81 with two 250W DE MH lamps suspended 8 inches above the tank. I have both fans off right now because the temp started dropping below 76 at night back in November (even with a heater in the sump.)
Kyle -
I am not using the electronic ballast right now because the set up was for my 29G. When I upgraded the tank to 120G two years ago, I went with AquaMedic OceanLight because of the sleek appearance that went well with the rest of the decor in the room. I don't like its noisy HQI ballast, though.
Tomoko
I don't know if SE bulbs run cooler than DE bulbs in the fixture with glass shields. I like the brightness of my DE bulbs. A DE bulb is supposedly a bit more efficient than a SE bulb but there are a lot of varied opinion on that.
Hard-Rock, are you running DE bulbs without a shield?
I also use fans on my tanks. My 120 has a 6" fan over the sump and I had to add another fan over my display since the temp in the summer was going up near 86 during the day (my programmable AC thermostat is set to go up to 86 in summer when no one is at home). I was going to install a chiller, but Eric Borneman told me to try the fan on the display. Once I put a fan on the display, the temp rarely goes above 81 with two 250W DE MH lamps suspended 8 inches above the tank. I have both fans off right now because the temp started dropping below 76 at night back in November (even with a heater in the sump.)
Kyle -
I am not using the electronic ballast right now because the set up was for my 29G. When I upgraded the tank to 120G two years ago, I went with AquaMedic OceanLight because of the sleek appearance that went well with the rest of the decor in the room. I don't like its noisy HQI ballast, though.
Tomoko
