Bulb changes
 

How often is it recommended to change MH / VHO bulbs?

Not sure on VHO's but most people say roughly once per year on MH's. This does fluctuate, some say 8 months, some say 18 months. What most agree on is that youneed to change them before you start to visually see a change in the quality or colour of lighting.

We change ours at the 12 month period.

Hey, how's the anemone doing?

Best,

Rob

Hey Rob,

The anemone's great... very well behaved.. found it's own spot very quickly and looks great :biggrin:

JT

Good to hear, he was getting kind of feisty in our tank :lol:

I've been running my 400 watt radiums for about 2 years straight and still seeing good colouration of corals and good coral growth..

des

Bulb changes
 

I have URI VHO's with an Icecap 660 ballast and get three to four years out of my bulbs. However, the standard is to change VHO's every 12- 14 months.

Larry

I have found that my VHO's gave noticable changes after 8 mo. Most reliable literature that I have read says change your VHO's every 6-8 mo. which coinsides with my experience. As for MH, I just upgraded mine so while I don't speek from experience, the reliable books say approx. 12 mo.

It really depends on whether you are going for the best conditions for the corals (change your lights often), or are trying to stretch every last penny out of your bulbs at the expense of the livestock. You can sustain your corals if you push your bulbs but your growth rates will drop off.

Rick[/i]

:eek: Thats amazing. Which ballasts are you using.

Well there you go there Doug, time to sink your hard working money into say a euro 12-3 now instead of new bulbs.\

mike

Bulb changes
 

I stand corrected. What I stated as the standard is for MH and PC's not VHO's. :redface:

Larry

For those of you who only change your bulbs every couple of years, how has your growth and colours changed? I'll bet that for most of you the bulb spectrum has faded do much that your corals are not as bright and that your growth rates have slowed drastically. I figure my 60 gallon is worth about $5000 equip and livestock. What is it to spend $100 on new bulbs every year? That is only about 2% of your investment in maintainence, very minimal considering the maintainence costs of other expensive things like cars and homes.

Rick

I have been running mine for 2 years between changes. never had coral stop growing or algae problems with this last set but visualy they needed to be changed. Now that was with AB bulbs which are a very high end bulb, I am currewntly running SA 10K's so we will see with thoes bulbs.

Steve

I find this to be the case with my bulb swap outs too. So far, I've always replaced my bulbs before they've hit 10,000 burn hours, which, depending on the photoperiod can be as long as two years. But I've noticed, this is just subjective mind you, that when I have new bulbs, I usually think "wow that's bright" when I look at my tank, but I find myself not thinking this comment after about a year ... So that's why I use 12 months as my general rule-of-thumb ... Not so much that I've noticed coral growth stopping but that I want to have the "gee whiz" factor when I look at the tanks. :cool: :lol: