14K phoenix bulbs
 

I love these bulbs, however when I got them in Jan 07 from a reefer they had 2 months on them. now its going on 9 months on them now with the 2 months added on. the color is still going good IMO, How long are they actually good for. they have been going on at 2pm til 8 pm for a total of 7 hrs per day

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-I've heard that for max. efficiency u shud change them every 10 months
but then u absolutely have 2 take into consideration lighting schedule, for me it's only 5-7 hours a day, but if u have sps corals then ur probably @ about
8+ hours/day so that cud reduce the bulbs span 2 only 6-8 months-mind you bigger bulbs (in wattage) tend to last longer, so good luck with that-

I ran me 14k pheonix bulbs (250 watt DE) for 14 months and they worked great, in fact I might stick them back in again, they held up much better then my reeflux 12ks. I use them for 6 hrs a day.

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-right now i got 2-70 watt-20k's and i'm happy with em' and all but hows the color with ur 14k's? i heard they give a nice purple tint-

my 14 K phoenix bulbs still hae great color. I head over to Afghanistan in Jan 08 so I will probably switch them in Nov when I get back from Wain wright after our confirmation exercise. to my megachrome 20K and when I get back Im going to buy another 2 sets of 14 Phoenix

there good untill you decide to change them. don't let store propaganda of 10 month changes push you into a sale. these same stores said change them ever 6 months 4 years ago, when people started noticing after 1 year they only lost 10% of the out put the stors looked silly so they all bumped it up to 8 to 12 month recomendation. I ran my AB's 18 months and there was only a 9% decrease in PAR output, but I concider AB's the cream of the cream in the bulb world.

Steve

from a study i read somewhere, par drops fairly quickly over the first few months and then levels out a bit and drops much more slowly.

The guy doing the study had accidentely left one of the old bulbs in and had thrown the new one out. While the par was much lower initially then the new ones, by the time the year was up all 3 bulbs were fairly close even though the old bulb was 2 years old.:mrgreen:

I keep my bulbs for at least 2 years. some are 3 years old now. SPS are still growing and have nice color.

Here is an interesting article on bulb life using the Phoenix bulbs as the test subject http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-04/ac/index.php. This guy claims a Metal halide bulb loses about 25% of its output at three to four months and at 18 months it is still at 70% of its initial output. So if a person is not going to change their bulbs every 4 months they are just as well to leave them in for a year and a half.

I remember that article and was going to post it. Its probably the reason why I've been using Phoenix for the last 3 years. I place them over my display for 12 months at 7-8 hours a day and then over my frag tank for another 5-6 months. After about a year and a half I often get some cyano appearing under the old bulb. Whether the change in spectrum and intensity causes it or if its just coincidence I'm not sure. I guess its worth mentioning too that I use HQI ballasts which don't seem to be available anymore. According to my Apex controller the electricity they draw is actually more like 360W each.

You got my curiosity going so I checked my Apex, I'm drawing 288 watts each on mine, they are HQI also. That's some kind of power you're pumping out of those things!

Doodskis, this thread is 4 years old! :D Good subject though.

I'd rather see an old thread brought back than a new one started about the same subject any day.

What wattage your bulbs are? 250W?

Correct, 250. DE bulbs are know to draw higher than the rated wattage.

Do you have a true magnestic ballast or are you using a select-a-watt electronic ballast? Mine are magnetic, I've got a dual ballast from Sunlight Supply and a single from Hamilton. I may actually be higher than what I said before. Just now I shut off everything on the powerbar except the hamilton and it was 3.3 amps for that light alone. If watts = amps x volts I guess thats 396W unless I understand that wrong.

Mine is an Aqua Medic dual ballast, not electronic. I did the same as you and I was at 4.8 Amps for both.

4.8 for two? Doesn't sound like M80? The 3.3 sounds bang on.

It certainly is. It's the Aqua Medic M ballast, made by Tridonic in Germany for Aqua Medic.

Is it somehow more efficient? you'd think it'd be closer to 2 x 3.3?

That would put the wattage at 396 watts, I've read a Phoenix 14K on an M80 should be around 310 watts. All I'm saying is what I read on the Apex.

I just did the same thing with my dual ballast. I shut everything else off to see what it was drawing and I got 6.2 amps. I always thought ballasts would be more consistent. Maybe this topic deserves its own thread?

Very interesting. I have another controller, maybe tomorrow I'll test it out and see what it reads.

It's a 4-year old thread I don't see the harm lol...

True, it is old but the amazing thing is there is not a whole bunch of discussions around it online. Sanjay Joshi seems to be the only one that has done any extensive research, he has published some really good articles. If you check other forums, there is mention of it but they don't go anywhere. I guess it's not as cool as the new LED trend, but overdriving MH bulbs with magnetic ballasts is interesting nonetheless.

In the case of some bulbs such as the radiums I run they fire to spec on hqi ballasts and aren't actually over driven. Not exactly going green using these ballasts but I love the output

hmmm.. I was wondering why I saw a subscribed post I didn't remember reciently LOL

a M80 ballast (true magnetic M80) which is only made by Advance transformers (north american company) should be pulling around 400 watts with a 250 watt SE bulb a little less with a DE bulb, at 310 watts I would say they put a M80 starter and capacitor on a pulse start ballast and used that. will be a little lower output this way (well a fair bit actualy) I am not saying thats what they did but I have seen that done. the other thing I saw once was a european ballast converted to NA voltage (easy to do) this gives different out put as they are not a HQI ballast but are simular.

Steve

Not to mention Philips doesn't produce them anymore. Really makes me wonder what those new aquamedics have inside them.

Might be time to pull out the screwdriver! Actually the newest AM ballast is the reflex cube, they are magnetic and manufactured in the USA but I don't know who makes them for AM. The one I am using is the Oceanballast dual 250.

From what I have been reading on RC it seems like the Bluewave 7 or Hamilton ballasts are the only way to get this true M80 ballast (PFO is out of business but worth a mention I guess), please correct me if I'm wrong.

Sunlight Supply no longer make the BlueWave ballasts. I think there might be a few vendors with some Hamiltons kicking around but I looked high and low and found no PFO or SLS. I paid a very pretty penny as a last-ditch effort to obtain one when a grow store in the US seemed to have a BlueWave. After paying a fortune to have the thing shipped here I was later notified they haven't got any and was refunded. Buying used if you can find them is pretty much the only option. I was considering the cube ballasts but was hesitant as I wanted a genuine M80. I've now got 5 x M80 just in case lol. I plan to use 4 over the big tank.

It was driving me nut thinking about what's inside the box so I grabbed the screwdriver and opened that sucker up.

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/IMG_1936.jpg

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/IMG_1933.jpg

It turns out StirCrazy was right, it is a pulse start ballast (Huaquan) with capacitor (Electronicon) and M80 starter (Arrancador). I went online and dug up the specs on this ballast and voila, there it was. The Apex was right according to this chart.

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/a...11124313PM.jpg