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Originally Posted by Samw
I'm getting the 10k K (Actually 13k K) Aqualine bulb.
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the best ballast for thoes as far as output goes, is the Ansi M80 magnetic ballast.. J&L sells them bare for 149.99 (lot cheeper than the the IceCap especial after you figure in taxes, shipping, ect..)
if you look at Sanjay's test on ballasts, the only ballast that was worse then the Icecap at powering a Iwasaki was the blueline.. both the magnetinc and the MV ballast put out way more PAR. once again we are running into a case whare the power consumed including the ballast ineficiency is less than the rated output for the bulb.. (sugesting another underpowering situation like they admidted to in there floressent ballasts)
to suport this also I finaly got a e-mail back from AB in europe and they said because we don't run the same power levels as they do in europ there ballasts are useless over here but they recomended the Ansi M80 (they actualy said the Advance one.. weather than is a issue or not I am not sure because so far it looks like they are the only ones that make a M80 ballast
) as much as I hate to push a companies produce .. PFO's 250 watt HQI ballast is the right one for the AB bulbs, and lacking better pricing from industreal sources I think I am going to have to buy one instead of building one.. ie.. for me to buy 2 bare ballast alone would be over 300.00 by a few bucks.. J&L has the dual 250 watt HQI PFO in a nice case and everything for 339.00.
now if you are looking at the icecap thinking that a electronic ballast will be a huge power savings not real.. it will save about 50 watts per ballast.. so about the same amount as a average powerhead.. personaly I would like to wait and see what the Fulham 250 watt electronic ballast is going to be like as it will probably be 1/2 the price of the others if they keep to there normal practice and it will be out this spring.
I have tried to keep my opinion of IceCap out of this and give you the facts so you can make a informed purchase.. if you want my candid opinion I will not post it on the board so you will have to e-mail and ask for it
Steve
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