wanted: MH lighting
 

anyone know of a cheap source for MH lights? or anyone have a setup forsale?

thx

Lights you would find the best prices online, for a ballast i would check out some grow shops like quik grow.

Re: wanted: MH lighting
 

How big a tank is it ?

Do you need a reflector as well ?

Are you using MH in combination with PC or Flourescents ?

The ballasts/mogul base I would get from Britelite ... the wiring from home depot and the reflector custom built from quickgrow hydro shop

I have a 175W setup for sale. See the post in the Buy and sell. :biggrin:

Re: wanted: MH lighting
 

Right now i have a 55g but i'm going to upgrade to a 250g, so how many watts would i need for a 250? and also, do i just need a ballast and bulbs plus wiring?

thx

Try checking some options -
http://www.jlaquatics.com/cgi-bin/sh...Metal%20Halide

There are other online sources for MH lighting as well, but reading about what is available to you will give you a better idea of which way you might want to go. Another good idea is to impose on (and hopefully visit) tank owners to see what they are running and why - more info to help shape your own decisions.

All my tanks with MH have been " in wall " so I just locate the ballast out of the way on X-10 timers and the rig the reflector with 5" L bracket and attach the mogul base to that ... the rule of thumb for MH is each lamp can cover 2 sq ft and anything deeper than 24" should have 400W bulb/ballast

What about these Ballasts? would these work? the price seems low. hmmm.

http://britelite.com/CdnShop/Publish....htm?cat40.htm

I will have a 4' Hamilton Tech canopy for sale at the end of March. It has 2 metal halide sockets plus 2 - 4' 40w flourescents. It also has 2 spider reflectors.

I am running 250w metal halides, but I need to keep the ballasts and mh bulbs.

PM me if you are interested

Jim

Yes they're fine. They're probably probe starts though. It's too bad they don't publish the ANSI code for those. Probe starts are M57, M58, M59 for 175W, 250W, 400W respectively; Pulse starts are M137/157 for 175W, M136/156 for 250W, M135/155 (I think) for 400W. Also there's HQI 250W pulse start M80 (uhh .. I think. I always get M80 and M81 mixed up. One is 250W and one is 150W).

Anyhow that's roughly the going rate for bare bones ballasts like that. Pulse-starts will cost a little more but not too much. You'll have to wire them up yourself and put them in a case yourself but that's not hard.

If you elect to go with pulse-starts make sure you get a long-distance ignitor .. the ones that come standard tend to be good for a ballast-to-lamp distance of 2', which is not very useful for our purposes.