Sanjay Joshi findings on MH bulbs

[plum70rt]

He is a Professor at penn state, very knowelgeable about lighting, I spoke to him in detail about lights at the FMAS show,
here is some info on his test results of Ballast and bulbs http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/.../aquarium.html

 

[plum70rt]

Its all confusing , He is a real nice guy, he says that he uses 6500k Ushio and see no difference in output in 2 yrs of use, also he uses a standard ballast , its take 8 years of savings to recover cost Vs electronic,I was happy to learn the the REEFlectors I have are better for focusing light , in the wide range, I mounded them correctly for my application, so I know as Much as a Penn State professor when I was selecting my light setup 10 ks and 20k only last a year, if you look at the penn state tank thats 400 watt 6500 k's

 

[brooklyn johnny]

He spoke at our WAMAS meeting too and I bugged him a bunch too. Excellent work he's doing, although I found out that he teaches something completely unrelated to the hobby, and just does his research on lighting for fun . Actually plum I think you meant 6500k iwasakis that last for 2 years, and unless it's recently changes he was running 10k ushios on the Penn State tank. That tank is unbelievable and he's invited our club up this summer to take a look and give out frags...
Would you believe he told up that he "throws away" frags after pruning his tank... That instigated our insistence that we take a trip up there...
What we took from the reflector research was that Diamond Lumenarcs and PFO parellels were overall the best, mounted parellel to the length of the tank...

 

[plum70rt]

now he said that he used 6500 ushios, on the penn state tank, 10 ks at home, we went to a friends house and gave him lots of frags

 

[josh]

Kipass, the deal with the 400 ballast to drives radiums is this. The HQi is actually a son agro 430 which tech. overdrives the lamp = whiter light short lamp life. The standard 400 ballast is actually 380 = bluer lamp longer bulb life.
Most people like to overdrive to get a more pleasing light. BUT, I don't believe it is recommended. 20K lamps are meant to be BLUE. I believe osram recommends the standard ballast last I saw, there seems to be somewhat off a ground swell against radiums at the moment. I have never used them myself. Persoanlly I would go with 250 HQI and supplement with actinics.