Cathic
Fish Wrangler
So here is the deal. I recently started doing a lot of research involving lighting with MH and with T5's etc etc. I know here at living reefs we thrive to understand a situation completely before coming to conclusions on products. I have spent the past several days reading through pages and pages of forum discussions from here and other sites such as reefcentral. I have also been linked to reefcentral before to use as a guide for other things (DIY, Mods, product review, etc.) So I will again use them as a reference for this discussion.
Now on to the meat of the subject. We have all heard horror stories of ebay lights and off brands (Odyssea) catching fire, burning a house down, stealing your soul and molesting new borns. Recently I came into the business of hunting some MH lights. (I'll save that for later) at any rate, Everyone knows of the relative cheapness of the Odyssea setup, roughly 179 bucks for a 36in setup including a 250w halide and 2 39w T5's and about 259 for a doulbe 250w halide setup with 54w T5's. That is cheap. dirt cheap. Now the debate has always been whether these were trustworthy effective and whether they will burn your house down.
In comes the discussion, in chat Ryan had warned me of such lights which got me on the subject of trying to prove or debunk the myths behind these lights. I scoured roughly 97 pages from reefcentral and discovered a few things.
Problems with these lights in the past,
Burning/Overheating
This was supposedly due to the magnetic ballast as opposed to an e ballast, there was also some indication that the lights were probably not cooled effectively by the fans.
The other issue involved placement of some certain wire (i cannot remember) and its connector which apparently was prone to shorting and melting, hence being fire prone.
What i found out: yes these lights are prone to fire in the pre 2007 model, however the 2007-2009 models changed the wiring location and changed from magnetic to electronic.
The fans were replaced with external fixtures and were made larger.
This is all well and such but i did more digging and found this,
The ballast were electrically inefficient pulling roughly 67-72 percent of said power reducing a 250 watt to a 169ish watt making the 250 basically pointless, however the light was still effective at coral growth , just frustrating for people buying a product labeled 250 and then having that reduced to a 150 effective level.
Upon more digging I found that the ballast could be replaced, with (icecaps?) or other more reliable ballast hence making the total cost of the unit go up to 369 if you replaced both the ballast. People were relatively happy with the quick effective swap of ballast and had no complaints.
secondly the 2007-2009 model retained the CF's or PC's (cant remember which) and people were able to switch the mountings to fit a T5 fixture upping the par rating of the total fixture (i have these links somewhere I will post those results).
Onward still I have done some more digging and found that the newer 2010 models have replaced the ballast with solid ones that pull 90% or more of their rated output, and also discontinued the PC/CF models and switched them with HO T5 fixtures from the get go.
Now I just want general debate on this if anyone has any input or thoughts. I would also like to avoid the brand flaming, since everyone has heard the story of these things.
*EDIT* Needs to be moved to lighting.
Now on to the meat of the subject. We have all heard horror stories of ebay lights and off brands (Odyssea) catching fire, burning a house down, stealing your soul and molesting new borns. Recently I came into the business of hunting some MH lights. (I'll save that for later) at any rate, Everyone knows of the relative cheapness of the Odyssea setup, roughly 179 bucks for a 36in setup including a 250w halide and 2 39w T5's and about 259 for a doulbe 250w halide setup with 54w T5's. That is cheap. dirt cheap. Now the debate has always been whether these were trustworthy effective and whether they will burn your house down.
In comes the discussion, in chat Ryan had warned me of such lights which got me on the subject of trying to prove or debunk the myths behind these lights. I scoured roughly 97 pages from reefcentral and discovered a few things.
Problems with these lights in the past,
Burning/Overheating
This was supposedly due to the magnetic ballast as opposed to an e ballast, there was also some indication that the lights were probably not cooled effectively by the fans.
The other issue involved placement of some certain wire (i cannot remember) and its connector which apparently was prone to shorting and melting, hence being fire prone.
What i found out: yes these lights are prone to fire in the pre 2007 model, however the 2007-2009 models changed the wiring location and changed from magnetic to electronic.
The fans were replaced with external fixtures and were made larger.
This is all well and such but i did more digging and found this,
The ballast were electrically inefficient pulling roughly 67-72 percent of said power reducing a 250 watt to a 169ish watt making the 250 basically pointless, however the light was still effective at coral growth , just frustrating for people buying a product labeled 250 and then having that reduced to a 150 effective level.
Upon more digging I found that the ballast could be replaced, with (icecaps?) or other more reliable ballast hence making the total cost of the unit go up to 369 if you replaced both the ballast. People were relatively happy with the quick effective swap of ballast and had no complaints.
secondly the 2007-2009 model retained the CF's or PC's (cant remember which) and people were able to switch the mountings to fit a T5 fixture upping the par rating of the total fixture (i have these links somewhere I will post those results).
Onward still I have done some more digging and found that the newer 2010 models have replaced the ballast with solid ones that pull 90% or more of their rated output, and also discontinued the PC/CF models and switched them with HO T5 fixtures from the get go.
Now I just want general debate on this if anyone has any input or thoughts. I would also like to avoid the brand flaming, since everyone has heard the story of these things.
*EDIT* Needs to be moved to lighting.
