IceCap 250 HQI / Optix III Pendant arrives!

Samw · #1 01-23-2003, 07:57 AM

Holy Cow, its bright! Too much light in the living room. 8)

Ballast is nice and cool to touch. Lamp though is hot as usual.

Hey Steve, are you going to the Vancouver Meeting? Want me to bring the pendant and ballast for testing with your light meter? You can bring your other 250 HQI ballasts and hook it up to my pendant for comparisons.

AJ_77 · #2 01-23-2003, 02:04 PM

Very sharp, Sam! Only 3 pictures?

Have you had it over the tank?

StirCrazy · #3 01-23-2003, 02:20 PM

Sam, are thoes the AB DE bulbs? have you got a replacement price on the bulb?

Steve

Jedi68 · #4 01-23-2003, 02:23 PM

Wow...wow...wow...very nice :shock:

If you don't mind me asking, what did you end up paying at the end of the day? Did our gov't take its share?

Samw · #5 01-23-2003, 03:59 PM

AJ, no, I haven't installed it over the tank yet. It'll require some planning still.

Steve, I haven't really tried locating a place locally for replacement bulbs. Yes, its AB 10000K DE. Would J&L stock or order them? Don't know what I'd be looking at in terms of price. I should have ordered an extra bulb from the place I ordered the lights from. Would have been $83 US.

Total with the govt's take? Too much. Well, let's see: $309US for the ballast/pendant/bulb combo + $35US shipping + $67.84Cdn taxes +$5 brokerage fee. So grand total is about $567.24 Cdn. Actually that's pretty good and cheaper than non-electronic ballasted pendants bought locally even with shipping added. IE. PFO w/ 10000K pendent is $604 ($528 * 1.145) Reefsun is $788.90 (689.00 * 1.145)

wayner · #6 01-23-2003, 04:07 PM

Not to put a damper on this, cause I do like the appearance of the DE 250W AB 10K bulbs, but I went with the Blueline 400W Electronic Ballast, & Radium Bulb with PFO Reeflector and it came to the same price you paid.

Samw · #7 01-23-2003, 04:21 PM

Where's the best place to get 400W BlueLine EBallasts? Just trying to find price difference between the two. IceCap 400W HQI is currently $175-$195US. But there's no specs on the IceCap website so I guess it must be a brand new product.

wayner · #8 01-23-2003, 06:20 PM

The Ice Cap 400W Electronic is a fairly new ballast, from what I've read on Reef Central some people were having problems with them, main one was bulb flickering, I don't know if they have all the bugs ironed out.

The only distributor of the Blueline Electronic Ballast is Champion Lighting in the U.S., I got mine from Tim at Seacare, he had ordered a number of them, not sure if he has any left.

Samw · #9 01-23-2003, 07:50 PM

Thanks for the info wayner.

Yeah, I could have saved some money by going with the reflector/single ended lamp but I didn't have enough space above my tank for the PFO reflector. So I went with a lower profile DE pendant. I had actually purchased a PFO reflector on boxing day to be used with the IceCap/SE bulb combo but returned it since it didn't fit.

wayner · #10 01-23-2003, 08:10 PM

I'm sure you'll be happy with the 250W DE AB, I ran a AB Spacelight for awhile 2 150W DE plus 2 24W actinics, I liked it, though the actinics that came with the spacelight didn't do much as far making things look bluer.

If your not happy with the 250W AB alone, actually, I think the AB 10k is actually 13k, you could throw in a couple of VHO actinics, it's really personal preference.

Good Luck!