What is T5VHO vs T5HO?

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Binare

Its great lighting up the arches at the local mcdonalds, or highbay lighting in a warehouse... Does little good for this application, money better spent elsewhere... Like coral or fish

Well I am not sure about that, I still have some more reading to do, but on initial review it looks like you might be able to use a higher output ballast to get 80ish watts out of your bulb instead of 54. that is a 33% increas in bulb output with no effect on bulb life. Also there are a couple aquatic lighting stores selling fixtures with these bulbs and a higher output ballast already.

Mabe this is what the high end T5 lights like giesmen, proflux ect are doing already to get the edge over the tec lights and such with out telling us. If so you could just upgrade the bulbs and ballast in a tec light and get high quality output.

also brings the question of active cooling into question, as these bulb and ballast combos were designed to operate in a wide enviorment, from very cold to very hot.. is it realy nessasary with this set up or is it just more stuff to break down causeing more after market sales for the companies.

and then thee is the bulb it's self, if you use a normal bulb in this fixture instead of the T5VHO bulb are you just overdriving them, if so you will most likely get a 10% increase instead of the 33, this is based off the overdriving tests I did with NO, PC, VHO, T10 and T8 bulbs when all is sed and done running twice the power into the bulb only gives you a 10 to 15% increase in output.

Steve