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St Albert Reefer
05-09-2002, 07:17 PM
Just wondering if anyone here is running a 150w HQI DE 20000K bulb over a small reef tank. I am curious about the color of the bulb.. pleasing to look at.. or too blue?

I thinking of buying a PFO mini pendant, HQI ballast and the 150w HQI DE 20000K bulb for my 10 gallon nano... overkill?

Delphinus
05-09-2002, 08:34 PM
Not yet, although I eventually will be going this way over my 20g. Have the ballast but haven't gotten the bulb yet or built the fixture (going to go with the DIY 500W halogen fixture instead of the PFO's or other units). Basically I want to see for myself if these things are all they're cracked up to be.

Bear in mind these things are big $$$. I'm not really convinced they're as whiz-bang as some people say. Watt-for-watt you do seem to get a little better lumens out of them, but you get much more heat as well, plus you can't cool them with a fan (they HAVE to run at a certain temperature), and plus there's the UV exposure risk (which is a pretty serious issue).

Now, with that all said, I have seen a tank lit by a 150W DE (there's an LFS here in town that has a display), and it does seem an impressive amount of light considering the wattage, and a nice colour balance. But I wouldn't go so far to say that it was brighter than my mogul 250W bulbs (Iwasaki 6500K) -- those are still my favourite.

But, I have to wonder, if part of the reason these things have the good PR that they do, is because they tend to come part-n-parcel with a reflector. Any comparison that looks at one bulb with reflector and one bulb without, the bulb with the reflector is going to win hands-down. That's part of the problem with the article in MFA2002 by Sanjay, this is the article that showed the 150W DE's to outperform even the 400W setups ... he was not using reflectors on the mogul setups whereas he was using the whole fixture (with built-in reflector) on the 150W DE. So, it wasn't apples to apples. (To Sanjay's credit: he does point this out, but many people have overlooked that little caveat...)

Anyways there's my $0.02. If you go this way in the near future let us know your thoughts on the matter. If I ever get off on this I will post my findings (but for me this is a project still a few weeks away, if not months.)

[ 09 May 2002, 16:35: Message edited by: delphinus ]

Delphinus
05-09-2002, 08:37 PM
BTW, the 20,000K bulbs are considerably less intense than their lower-K counterparts at the same wattage. I doubt you'd find the intensity of the lighting overkill, although over a 10g ... maybe. I'd be more worried about the heat that thing is going to put off, a 10g is not going to be completely effective at shedding that heat as will larger tanks.