Ballasts

[Salty Dog]

What do you guys perfer for balast's on MH. Im thinking of doing a complete re do of my current light fixture. Right now its an Aqua Medic fixture 72" with 4-250w halides and 4 39 w actinics.
I was thinking of changing the balast's to 400 w mogals but was not sure on a great quality unit, was considering Icecap's but not sure.

My tank is a 225g sps. Light fixture is coming up on a year old so its time for new bulbs, But instead of ordering 250 watt Im thinking of just changing the ballasts, and up grading tyo 400 watt x 4

Thanks All Bill

 

[pecan2phat]

Bill,
CL&P must love you.
Don't recall the height of your tank but if your more then 24" tall then it's not a bad idea. Also if you like to run 20k bulbs like the Radiums then even a 24" tall tank would not be overkill with 400w Radiums. M80 & M58 tar ballast are so inefficient that I would leans toward an IC electronic ballast if this was for my setup.

 

[Salty Dog]

thanks pecan,

 

[juiceguy]

i have the IC 400's running and the galaxy 400 and the galaxy puts out a nicer color vs the IC and if you are going to use radiums, from what i was told the galaxy is the only e-ballast that comes close to an HQI ballast

 

[Salty Dog]

whynot just use the HQI ?

 

[juiceguy]

i always had IC's ballast and they never gave me any reason to switch except for now after seeing how radiums look on them. HQI are bulky, run hot and use more electricity so i wanted to try the galaxy ballast.