What 250w metal halide bulb do you reccomend? (1 Viewer)

[wendy32693]

Question about metal halide ballast

One of the bulbs went out in my fixture today so its time to buy some new bulbs, but havnt bought any before and not sure what all the different bulbs look like in colors. Its needs to be 250w double ended bulb. Would like something that would make the colors on the corals stand out. Would like to try to keep it at $60 per bulb or below as I dont have tons to spend on bulbs. need 3 of them. Any recommendations?

 

[padanky]

I have phoenix 14k, not sure the cost of them but I'll probably need to replace them soon since I got my set-up used.

 

[wendy32693]

does that kind of bulb make the coral colors look good? I dont know what brand bulbs I have as they came with the fixture when i bought it but they are 14k bulbs and are not blueish colored but more of a white and makes the corals look dull. I would like something with a little bit of a blueish tint, not extremely blue though.

 

[steveb]

Take a look here and then select the color temp tab. It will let you drill down and find different 250 DE metal halide brands. Your probably looking for something in the 15k - 20k if you want the bluer look with 20k being more blue. But it is somewhat dependent on the ballast as well. I know for sure it doesn't have all the bulbs available but its a start. I think the problem you are going to have is is most of the 15k, 17.5, 22k are going to be over budget.

Manhattan Reefs - Sanjay's Lighting Guide

 

[padanky]

Mine isn't as blue as I'd like, colors don't really pop too much.

 

[wendy32693]

I ordered the new bulbs and got them in, but still have a problem. I figured that one of the bulbs had burnt out because they were getting dull and old anyways. But I got the new bulbs in today and put them in and the middle light is still not turning on. I plugged one of the other ballasts into it and it turns on so im guessing something is wrong with the balast. But I used one of those voltage testers and the ballast that wont turn the bulb on showed 116 on the tester, the other ballasts that work fine showed as 138 on the tester. So is there any way to fix this? they are coralife aqualight 250w ballast

 

[wendy32693]

Also if there is nothing i can do to make it work can I buy a different brand ballast and run it with a coralife metal halide fixture? I mean are you able to use different brand ballasts while running coralife ballasts on a coralife fixture or does it have to be a coralife ballast only? (if this makes any sense)

 

[steveb]

Is the ballast in the fixture?

 

[wendy32693]

no there the big box looking ones that plug into the fixture

 

[padanky]

My bulbs are bad and I ordered two 250w Giessman Megachrome 21k from Marinedepot for $221! Alot more than I was expecting. But I wanted change in the tank.

Finally figured they were needed since I'm getting more algae on the glass quicker and one patch of hair algae, and its causing my overflow to slow down and water is getting stagnant across the top. Corals seem fine, but I don't want the algae to get out of hand.

 

[reeftopia]

I second the phoenix 14000 k they really worked well on my tanks, coralife is not a good brand if you need to replace it go with a galaxy

 

[steveb]

no there the big box looking ones that plug into the fixture

I don't know if it would be repairable or not (if it is an iron core magnetic ballast you can probably pick up a similar replacement ballast and igniter from an electrical supply house something along the lines of this M58 250W Metal Halide Ballast ).

But since it is external you could either purchase a replacement from them or probably use just about any external metal halide ballast (would have do some wire splicing into the coralvue cord that plugs into the fixture and possibly remove an igniter if one is present in the fixture).

Here is a link to a conversion
How change aqualight pro HQI ballast to IceCap 250W ballast? - 3reef Forums
coralife aqualight w 150w de halides modifying to 250w de halides - 3reef Forums


Here is the coralife phone number 985-718-1465

 

[wendy32693]

alright, wwell my husband took the ballast apart and took apart one of the good ballasts and was trying different things from the good one on the bad one and he said it was something called a capacator that is bad on the ballast that wont work so he bought one for i think $12 online so will see if that works when it comes. I ended up getting Ushio 20k mh bulbs and i like them, they make the corals real pretty and they seem to stand out alot more then my old ones. These were more then i was wanting to spend also, I beleive they were around $75 each bulb

 

[steveb]

Cool. Yeah we usually just replace the whole deal up at the church in the gym, they are high pressure sodium but similar configuration. The capacitor should be something like 15µF 400VAC for the 250W MH ballast if I remember correctly.