Wanting to upgrade lighting

ErinCahir

Sausage Wrangler
So I've tried to look into this myself, and quite frankly it's making my brain hurt.
I know it's 4-8w/gallon. And I've heard we should be on the higher side of that since our tank is deep. I got all caught up in T-5, T-2, MH... whatever. Like I said... brain hurts.

We have a 150 gallon. It's 24"W, 48"L and 30"D.
We (obviously) want it for a reef tank.
Help!! Thanks!
 
Its interesting to read the reviews on the Odyssea Units, Here's one in particular:

I have been using this light for 1 1/2 years so far and it works great. I heard alot of complaints about that mh ballasts dieing so i decided to open them up and see what they were made of.... the only thing i could see why these are dieing is that they have cheap Aishi capacitors in them so i replaced them with some nichicon capacitors. but all in all this is a good light as long as you keep up with maintenance.

Good to know there's people who try to pick apart and pinpoint these issues, it's really good info.
 
Thanks!
I read a few about things catching on fire (scary!) but it seems like it was happening with the older ones.
I also read about a guy who replaced his ballasts entirely (something called ice caps... I have no idea about this stuff) and says that now they are amazing lights. So we were thinking of doing that and buying new bulbs right off the bat because the complaint that pretty much everyone has about them is the bulbs they come with are horrible.
 
If you check out my build thread, I just got those lights for my tank. They're great so far, and if you do want to replace anything on them you don't have to do it right away. I'll probably only keep the stock bulbs for 1/2 the normal time and eventually if the ballasts blow, then I'll replace them
 
So we were thinking of doing that and buying new bulbs right off the bat because the complaint that pretty much everyone has about them is the bulbs they come with are horrible.

This is true for almost any light fixture that you would be buying. Most of the stock bulbs that come with them are crap.
 
I just ordered the fixture! Hooray!
I was going to get bulbs, too (I don't want it to look like crap).
Any suggestions?
 
Alright, nevermind.
They're out of stock. And everywhere else I looked they're out of stock, too.
Grrr.
Guess I'll just have to be patient.
 
When you do start looking for bulbs, Look at the XM Metal Halide bulbs, they have some of the best PAR outputs for 250w bulbs
 
Well I ordered it. Shipped yesterday. If it sucks I'll make sure to let you all know so no one makes the same mistake. But I'm still very excited.
 
I guess it's to late to post a brand name fixture that you can trust to be in business for years to come.Probably over your budget but here ist is anyways.

Aquarium Specialty
I was looking at those fixtures a week ago ... It's really cool how they put the LEDs into a T5 type bulb, I've been trying to figure out if it's powered by the T5 ballast though, and if you could swap it for a normal T5 bulb
 
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