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Originally Posted by Wilty
And since its all home built I won't have the UV filters.
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don't need them with a single ended bulb.
Watts is a bad way to look at bulbs as there are several 250 watt bulbs out there that will put out more power than some 400 watt bulbs, and vise versa. you not only have to look at the bulb but also at the ballast that you are using with that bulb. there has been so much confusion in this area that many people are running good bulbs on ballast that were not designed for them so they are only realizing 50 to 80% of the full power the bulb was designed for. take the radium for example. on a normal north american 250 watt ballast it looked dim in my tank and barly put out more PAR than my old 175 watt 1000K bulb. but when hooked up to a 250 watt HQI ballast (replicates the power delivered by a european reactor ballast that we cannot use in North america) it was putting out only 5% less PAR than my AB bulb on the same ballast. so with the HQI ballast I got a increase of 170% in the amount of PAR delivered through 5" of air and 7" of water.
Steve
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