difference between magnetic and electronic ballasts

[jawwad2004]

I am upgrading from power compact lighting to metal halide, and Im doing all my research. My question is, what is the difference between magnetic and electronic ballasts? Is one better then the other?

 

[Deanos]

Do ballasts make a difference?

It's a long read, but skip to "Economic Considerations" and "Conclusions" for quick answers.

Dean

 

[jhale]

I have both, the electronic get my vote, smaller size, less heat, less power to run.
make up the difference with a good reflector.
check out the EVC ballast's and bulbs I really like mine.

 

[jawwad2004]

Can you guys explain kelvin ratings to me? Which one would be the best? Since Im planning to sell my current PC fixture, I wont have any actinic bulbs, so I think we should put that into consideration as well.

 

[nanoreefer22]

Well for max growth you'd go with a 65K bulb, downside is the bulb is very yellow.
For good growth and a nice white color go with a 10K bulb.
I'm now running Hamilton 14K's and the color is just what I wanted, not to blue not to white.
20k is the other extreme where growth may not be as good but its really blue in color.

Basically as you go higher in the Kelvin ratings they get bluer and bluer.

 

[House of Laughter]

Kelvin is a measure of color temperature of the bulb, as Nano said, the higer the kelvin rating the bluer the color of the bulb.

it is said, that 6500k is the closest thing to natural sunlight and that's why corals grow fastest under that rating of bulb, but, my tank grows pretty fast and I use 10k and 14k bulbs.

my .02 House

 

[cali_reef]

Do ballasts make a difference?

It's a long read, but skip to "Economic Considerations" and "Conclusions" for quick answers.

Dean

That is a good article but it is a bit old. The new icecap ballast will fire almost any bulb and you don't need to send it back for tuning.

Check out JB NY's 250W bulb test results if you want to see the color difference between each brand\K rating:
http://www.cnidarianreef.com/lamps.cfm

The ratings sometime don't mean much, 10,000K bulbs looks different from different manufacturers.

 

[alrha]

I believe there is also an opinion that corals actually use the bluer lights of the spectrum as that is what they receive in the ocean (they penetrate deeper in the water)

 

[Deanos]

That is a good article but it is a bit old. The new icecap ballast will fire almost any bulb and you don't need to send it back for tuning.

True :shocked1:! So I found some RC.com threads with a little less dust on them. Enjoy!

Magnetic vs. Electronic

 

[cali_reef]

Or you can just go straight to Sanjay?s site:

http://www.reeflightinginfo.arvixe.com/index.htm