I had a hamilton hood with 3 250w DE bulbs and 2 165w vhos. I kept the MH hqi ballasts but I'm now using lumenmax reflectors with xm 10k SE bulbs.
I lost the vhos but the single ended bulbs on hqi ballasts are easily twice as bright as the double ended ones and the colour of the xm bulbs are a nice white, I don't miss the vhos at all
With the new lights, a blue millie frag I got from Wendell in May has developed bright pink polyps (they were brown) and it has become my favourite coral in the tank. Unfortunately I can't get a good pic showing how pink the polyps really are
