metal halide ballast question, please help

[Darkangel]

Hi all, i just wanted to ask if there are any 175 watt hqi DE metal halide ballasts out there? I havent seemed to find alot or any information on these. Plenty of stuff on 150 watt and 250 watt but nothing for 175 watt. I have a 100 gallon tank i want to setup as a reef tank 60x 16x 24" and i want to use MH lighting on it supplemented by t5 actinics and i was trying to find a balance between a cooler less costly blub (150) vs. the better light penetration of the 250. I want softies and fish, inverts and maybe someday lps but i dont want to get into that for a long time if ever and i dont want to get into sps at all. So any recommendation would be very helpful. Thanks for your time!

aaron,

 

[Anonymous]

OK, someone help me out, because I can never remember which is the depth (top to bottom) and which is the depth (back to front). If your tank is going to be only 16" high, a 150w MH would be plenty, even if you were to move onto SPS later. If it's going to be 24" high, it should be enough for LPS (and certainly would be better for softies than a 250w!).

 

[Anonymous]

Hi all, i just wanted to ask if there are any 175 watt hqi DE metal halide ballasts out there? I havent seemed to find alot or any information on these. Plenty of stuff on 150 watt and 250 watt but nothing for 175 watt. I have a 100 gallon tank i want to setup as a reef tank 60x 16x 24" and i want to use MH lighting on it supplemented by t5 actinics and i was trying to find a balance between a cooler less costly blub (150) vs. the better light penetration of the 250. I want softies and fish, inverts and maybe someday lps but i dont want to get into that for a long time if ever and i dont want to get into sps at all. So any recommendation would be very helpful. Thanks for your time!

aaron,

You're going to have about as much luck as I did trying to find a 600W MH to fit a dual-bulb rig. They may be out there, but lotsa luck, mang.

Here: http://www.goodmart.com/products/259129.htm

I expect that you're going to find that certain 'sizes' are mostly available for certain applications, such as security in the case of this MH rig I've found. So, if you're handing with wiring and building stuff out, there's your rig.

 

[Darkangel]

thanks for the help so far guys!

the escaped ape:
its a 24" tall tank from top to bottom . so you think a duel 150 watt setup would be better then a duel 250 watt setup? Why dont they make 175 watt DE hqi bulbs?? I found what appears to be a coralvue duel 150/175 watt hqi ballast (model # coralvue CV-D-175B ) and i was thinking of running that with a pair of odyssea metal halide pendants. I would replace the 250 watt ballasts with the coralvue and i would replace the 250 watt bulbs with better ones, either 175 or 150 watt ones. And then i would have a metal halide setup for under $300 . what do you think?


Seamaiden:
what do you mean a 600w mh? Thank you!

 

[Anonymous]

thanks for the help so far guys!

the escaped ape:
its a 24" tall tank from top to bottom . so you think a duel 150 watt setup would be better then a duel 250 watt setup? Why dont they make 175 watt DE hqi bulbs?? I found what appears to be a coralvue duel 150/175 watt hqi ballast (model # coralvue CV-D-175B ) and i was thinking of running that with a pair of odyssea metal halide pendants. I would replace the 250 watt ballasts with the coralvue and i would replace the 250 watt bulbs with better ones, either 175 or 150 watt ones. And then i would have a metal halide setup for under $300 . what do you think?


Seamaiden:
what do you mean a 600w mh? Thank you!

24" high would tempt me to buy a 150w MH set-up, though 175w might work even better, if you can get your hands on it (oh, and $300 for a set-up sounds pretty sweet to me!). If you were planning on SPS, the best would be 250w, but as you're really focussed on LPS and softies, 250 might be too bright. As for why they don't make 175w DE bulbs, I can only guess, but I'm assuming it because the market for them is small. Maybe if you're willing to splash out on a MH set-up, you're likely to be wanting to keep light-demanding coral, which means that, if you have a shallow tank, 150w might do you, but for everyone else, the more the better, so 250w, at probably little more cost than 175w, would likely sell better.

I think Seamaiden was talking about a 600w MH lamp, not for reefs, but for plant cultivation, if I remember correctly. After all, you can get 400w MH lamps and 1000w MH lamps, why not 600w? But I guess she ran into a similar problem...

 

[Anonymous]

Yes, TEA, you've got it sussed. 600W metal halide was what I was talking about, and yes, it's not easy to find such a beast. 400W & 1000W easy-peezy. 600W MH, not so easy.

 

[Darkangel]

Thank you both for the valuable information. I think i'm going to use the 150 watt duel ballast with the odyssea pendants. And then eventually supplement with t5 actinics. Thanks again!

aaron,