14K phoenix bulbs
 

I love these bulbs, however when I got them in Jan 07 from a reefer they had 2 months on them. now its going on 9 months on them now with the 2 months added on. the color is still going good IMO, How long are they actually good for. they have been going on at 2pm til 8 pm for a total of 7 hrs per day

-reply
 

-I've heard that for max. efficiency u shud change them every 10 months
but then u absolutely have 2 take into consideration lighting schedule, for me it's only 5-7 hours a day, but if u have sps corals then ur probably @ about
8+ hours/day so that cud reduce the bulbs span 2 only 6-8 months-mind you bigger bulbs (in wattage) tend to last longer, so good luck with that-

I ran me 14k pheonix bulbs (250 watt DE) for 14 months and they worked great, in fact I might stick them back in again, they held up much better then my reeflux 12ks. I use them for 6 hrs a day.

reply
 

-right now i got 2-70 watt-20k's and i'm happy with em' and all but hows the color with ur 14k's? i heard they give a nice purple tint-

my 14 K phoenix bulbs still hae great color. I head over to Afghanistan in Jan 08 so I will probably switch them in Nov when I get back from Wain wright after our confirmation exercise. to my megachrome 20K and when I get back Im going to buy another 2 sets of 14 Phoenix

there good untill you decide to change them. don't let store propaganda of 10 month changes push you into a sale. these same stores said change them ever 6 months 4 years ago, when people started noticing after 1 year they only lost 10% of the out put the stors looked silly so they all bumped it up to 8 to 12 month recomendation. I ran my AB's 18 months and there was only a 9% decrease in PAR output, but I concider AB's the cream of the cream in the bulb world.

Steve

from a study i read somewhere, par drops fairly quickly over the first few months and then levels out a bit and drops much more slowly.

The guy doing the study had accidentely left one of the old bulbs in and had thrown the new one out. While the par was much lower initially then the new ones, by the time the year was up all 3 bulbs were fairly close even though the old bulb was 2 years old.:mrgreen:

I keep my bulbs for at least 2 years. some are 3 years old now. SPS are still growing and have nice color.

Here is an interesting article on bulb life using the Phoenix bulbs as the test subject http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-04/ac/index.php. This guy claims a Metal halide bulb loses about 25% of its output at three to four months and at 18 months it is still at 70% of its initial output. So if a person is not going to change their bulbs every 4 months they are just as well to leave them in for a year and a half.

I remember that article and was going to post it. Its probably the reason why I've been using Phoenix for the last 3 years. I place them over my display for 12 months at 7-8 hours a day and then over my frag tank for another 5-6 months. After about a year and a half I often get some cyano appearing under the old bulb. Whether the change in spectrum and intensity causes it or if its just coincidence I'm not sure. I guess its worth mentioning too that I use HQI ballasts which don't seem to be available anymore. According to my Apex controller the electricity they draw is actually more like 360W each.