Watts per gallon, just for fun...

nm reef

Active Member
Interesting post....my 55 reef has
4x65 watt CSL pc's(10k's)
2x110 watt uri VHO's(o3 actinic blue)
8.77 watts per gal
assortment of softies & lps.......30 plus corals altogether........
 

adrian

Active Member
Sam, why would you need more watts using VHO than NO?
It is interesting isnt it...The way its looking so far is there is no magic number using WPG <img src="graemlins//mischievous.gif" border="0" alt="[Mischievous]" />
 

kris walker

Active Member
From doing some research, I found that NO is more efficient than VHO. I don't know why though. After the initial lumens degradation, a standard efficacy for VHO is 50-60 lm/Watt while that for NO is 60-70 lm/Watt.
Cheers,
sam
 

treble

Member
On my 16G I have.... 1.8 :) I am going to get another light and then I will have.....2.6 WPG, but the again, I just might go for the 30 somethin W bulb??? we'll see
 

ironreef

Member
go look at IC site ppl run no lighting on IC ballast they run close to the same. Vho still run higher but the no bulbs cost less but the bulbs run alot hotter. I still use vho bulbs cuz I don't like running no bulbs that hot and vho bulbs have better cooler IMO. but we know wpg isn't accurate it was just for fun. Halides are the least effiecant bulb for watts but produce the most par and intesity. halide watts vs no watts halides would produce better growth. IME Ive had vho tanks with 8wpg and had less growth than a halide tank with 4 wpg. JME
 

kris walker

Active Member
Hi Iron,
What site are you referring to? From everything I've read, MH seems to be the most efficient in terms of output lumens per input Watt.
kris
 

adrian

Active Member
So people run NOs on an ice cap which burns them brighter but hotter, meaning you get roughly the same output as when using VHOs, but they dont last as long, I think I would just pay for the VHOs :rolleyes: Sam, are you saying the NOs are more efficient when driven on an NO ballast or VHO, either way I dont understand how they could be better, whay would they even make VHO <img src="graemlins//confused.gif" border="0" alt="[confused]" /> Im just curious is all ;)
 

kris walker

Active Member
I think it is just conventional conservative thinking that NO bulbs are not capable of handling the very high wattages VHO ballasts deliver. Perhaps this was true for conventional magnetic ballasts, but it is appearing through experimentation not to be true for electronic ballasts. You probably already read this (I just read it 10 mins ago), but check out
<a href="http://www.icecapinc.com/famaarticle.htm" target="_blank">http://www.icecapinc.com/famaarticle.htm</a>
It is a good article that talks about these recent experiments a little (thanks Iron for pointing me to it).
kris
 
S

starfishjackedme

Guest
I've got 2080 watts over a 200gal. I am using 880 watts of VHO and 1200 watts of MH. I am aiming toward a mostly sps coral tank.
 
I have about 5.5WPG in my 30G. I personally am not satisfied so as soon as tax money comes in I'm getting more lighting. As far as corals I have star, mushroom, and yellow polyps, frogspawn, bubble, colt, toadstool, flowerpot, and encrusting gorgonian.
 

daluminum

Member
I think it's cute that everyone has their wattage figured out to the hundredths of a decimal.. If only you could see how much your light changes in a matter of seconds... In my job I work around mercury lamps, and mercury Xenon lamps.. ALL the time... the typical mercury lamp that I use runs about 100w.. I work in a clean room that is 68 year round.. with the doors open I can read about 72 degrees inside the tool at exactly 100W.. I can close the doors.. wait 20 seconds.. read a temp of 78 and an intesity of about 103W.. same tool just a week later.. 78 and about 96W.. So.. haha.. dont get to picky on the decimals.. aprox is good enough.. :D :D :D
 

luke

Member
I WIN :D
17.5 watts per gallon! and moving to 35 in a matter of weeks.
Of coarse I have an advantage of having to only devide by 10 gallons (1 175w over a 10, but going to a second when I can afford another lamp, have the ballast in my garage)
Luke
 

twoods71

Active Member
Man I would hate to see the electric bills from some of the people above.
Maybe the WPG rule can still be used to determine who burns the most electricity over there tank? :D
3.2W
Softies & LPS
 

ny reef

Member
it should be money per gallon wow some of these have to cost a bunch..I have had success on a 55 with 3 wpg dont know why but it works maybe it has to do with how deep the tank is?? <img src="graemlins//uhuh.gif" border="0" alt="[U-Huh]" />
 

reefnjeff

Member
6x40 wyatts divided by 75g = 3.2 wyatts per.. :rolleyes: uuuuummmmm!! know were I can get some good used VHO ballest.. <img src="graemlins//freak.gif" border="0" alt="[freak]" />
 
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