DIY Metal Halides

[lowrider19]

I was curious if anyone knows if you can buy a MH set up from Lowes or Home Depot. They have a 150W pennent light but I wanted to know if you can buy the ballast, sockets, etc. seperate. Anyone know? Also, will the 150W they have there work and how high should it be from the tank?

 

[bencc]

I'm not sure about lowes or home depot but you can go to your local elec supply store and get the ballast and socket pretty cheap, around here it's about 35 bucks for both. This is what I was going to do but I ended up finding someone selling an old warehouse 250 watt halide light. I took out the ballast and socket and got a 250 watt coralvue 12k light of off ---- all for less than a hudred dollars.

 

[rangermonroe]

The onesw that they sell at the home improvement stores are of a different spectrum of light than what we like to see in our tanks. Also the less desireable of the algae thrive in this yellow spectrum.
I believe that the kelvin rating of the bulbs in Lowe's (phillips brand, I believe) was around 4500K. Most folks perfer 10000K lights and the lowest K-rating that I am familiar with (for marine usage) is 6500k. Some bulbs run up to 20,000k. These appear very blue /white.