Lighting question... again.

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by whaase

Does that ballast run most/all bulbs?

Walter

I'm sort of waiting for Stircrazy to reply because he's the resident expert on M80, but as far as I know: not only will M80 run most 250W lamps of interest to us in the hobby, it will run them optimally (as close to lamp specs as possible). Other ballasts tend to overdrive or underdrive the lamps, or have a harsher starting process. The claim with electronic ballasts is that the lamps will last longer, this seems to be because the bulbs are underdriven slightly. This means the bulbs must therefore be slightly dimmer. Overdriven lamps, by contrast, tend to be brighter, but there must therefore be a cost (i.e. shorter useful lifespan - the candle that burns twice as bright burns for half as long, the candle that burns half as bright burns for twice as long). Conceivably, anyhow.

Only drawback to M80 is that there is only one ignitor available. Whereas with most other pulse start ballasts, there is the standard version ignitor (with a BTL or "ballast to lamp" distance of 2 feet, that is to say, the wire length between ballast and lamp cannot exceed 2 feet), or a long-distance ignitor (depending on the ballast model, either 10 feet or 20 feet, which is more useful to us aquarists who want to mount the ballasts somewhere away from the canopy of the aquarium). The M80 ballast has only one ignitor available, which has a BTL of 5 feet. This is probably "just long enough" for our needs, but it's something to keep in mind when thinking about where to hide the ballasts. If you need something longer then you are probably back to looking at electronic ballasts, or one of the other pulse-start ballasts (i.e., ANSI M138 for 250W). I believe any pulse-start ballasts sold as a package for aquarists (i.e., the PFO's) will be including the long-range ignitor already, so no worries if you're looking at one of those.

BTW, I've looked into the cost of buying bare ballasts for M80 before, and I found that for the price difference (a nominal value like $20 or so), you're probably further ahead just buying the ballasts from J&L. Comes with a case and everything, no muss no fuss. Here's a link for the M80:
Single ballast: http://www.jlaquatics.com/cgi-bin/sh...gno=pfo-bh251q
Dual ballast: http://www.jlaquatics.com/cgi-bin/sh...gno=pfo-bh252q
I believe these are PFO brand.