M57 & Ushio 10,000K bulbs

[Delphinus]

I have three 175W 10000K bulbs over two different tanks. The "newest" two are over my ritteri tank, and have >8000 hours burn time so far. The older one has roughly 10000 hours. No issues of bulb life here. They owe me nothing. And yet on startup they still fire like a SOB. Really, I am not making this up.

Very realistically I would expect the intensity of the newer bulbs to be brighter, but if you were to go by any indication in the tank that the bulbs are somehow no longer effective .... well there is no indication. If I was losing livestock, or if livestock was not growing, or if there was presence of pest algaes ..... well .... I don't have any of this? So what do I make of this??? Wrong ballasts, bulbs seriously overused (I would never recommend a replacement schedule like this ... these bulbs were supposed to be replaced last year but for various reasons it never happened) ....

So .... there you have it. What to make of this??? I'd have even better performance with M137's instead of M57's?