Metal Halide Lighting

[rjestrada]

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but I recently purchased a SunPod 14,000K HQI Metal Halide Light. Can I use a 20,000K bulb in this or can I only go up to 14,000K?

[tholleyh46]

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but I recently purchased a SunPod 14,000K HQI Metal Halide Light. Can I use a 20,000K bulb in this or can I only go up to 14,000K?

You should be able to use any temp bulb you'd like too.

[leebca]

I moved these posts to the Reef Forum from the Saltwater-Fish Forum. With saltwater fishes, we really don't need high powered lighting.

You should get more attention in the Reef Forum to your question.

Good luck!

[Ninong]

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but I recently purchased a SunPod 14,000K HQI Metal Halide Light. Can I use a 20,000K bulb in this or can I only go up to 14,000K?

You can use any double-ended metal halide lamp of the same wattage. The Kelvin rating makes no difference. You just can't use a lamp of a different wattage. Or one that doesn't fit into your sockets.

[lakeside]

I replaced my 175 w Hamilton 14k metal halide bulbs with XM 10Ks. The Xms fire last for about one minute then go out. Has anyone had this experience? The ballasts are Custom sea life 175W.

[charlie]

Have you tried another bulb in the same place?

[lakeside]

yes i tried 2 bulbs and two different sockets ie transformers.

[charlie]

Kind of sounds like the ballast you have doesn't like XM bulbs. I think that you should maybe get in touch with Custom Sea Life and ask them what the deal is?

[Ninong]

Kind of sounds like the ballast you have doesn't like XM bulbs. I think that you should maybe get in touch with Custom Sea Life and ask them what the deal is?

I think Custom Sea Life went out of business a few years back.

[Ninong]

I replaced my 175 w Hamilton 14k metal halide bulbs with XM 10Ks. The Xms fire last for about one minute then go out. Has anyone had this experience? The ballasts are Custom sea life 175W.

I think that's a standard M57 ballast. It should work fine with either the Hamilton 14,000K or the XM 10,000K 175w lamps.

BTW, on that ballast, the 175w Hamilton 14,000K measured 29 PPFD compared to 62 PPFD for the 175w XM 10,000K according to Dr. Sanjay Joshi's tests. Good move.

I suspect that maybe your ballast is defective. Either that or both of your new XM lamps are defective. Do the old 175w Hamiltons still work on that ballast?

[lakeside]

Yes the old bulbs worked fine. Here's the strangest part. I left them in and left the ballasts on. They all fired yesterday but it took 4 hours to do so. As of now only 2 of three are working. Its as if when they fire initially the gas is not hot enough to ignite. They then go out and periodically try to fire again. Could they be breaking in? As I said 2 of three seem to be working fine now.

[tholleyh46]

I'm not sure I read or gathered all of the above completely, but if you're talking about "new" bulbs it is perfectly normal for them to have to burn in. Some bulbs will take longer than others but generally once they've fired off and gotten a good burn they tend to light up quite easily thereafter.

[Ninong]

Yes the old bulbs worked fine. Here's the strangest part. I left them in and left the ballasts on. They all fired yesterday but it took 4 hours to do so.

That is not normal, even for brand new lamps. If the third one doesn't start working very soon, I would complain to the vendor.

It's also possible that your ballast could be going bad.