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    3 Websites You Should Know For Reef Aquarium Lighting

    creative commons : aditya A lot of misinformation floats around the interwebz on reef aquarium lighting. Thankfully we have PAR meters and spectrometers that provide objective evidence to the other wise extremely subjective evidence aquarists use to claim bulbs, ballasts and reflectors better than one another. Here are 3 sites you should know when making [...]

    DE Metal Halide

    creative commons : aditya

    A lot of misinformation floats around the interwebz on reef aquarium lighting. Thankfully we have PAR meters and spectrometers that provide objective evidence to the other wise extremely subjective evidence aquarists use to claim bulbs, ballasts and reflectors better than one another. Here are 3 sites you should know when making reef aquarium lighting decisions and changes.

     

    1) Advanced Aquarist: Thanks to Dana Riddle and Sanjay Joshi there is more information regarding lighting and corals at this online magazine than anywhere else. Here are a few pages worth bookmarking for reference:

     

     

    2) Manhattan Reefs / Sanjay Joshi’s Lighting Guide: Take nearly all the work Sanjay has done and consolidate it into one easy to use location and you have the metal halide lighting guide. The easy to use navigation even allows you to compare bulbs against one another. See the Articles section for a complete list of Sanjay’s lighting work.

     

     

    3) T5 Testing / The Grim Reaper: Grim has tested countless T5 bulbs and bulb combinations. There is plenty of information on the original RC Q&A Thread, but the majority is summarized on his T5 Testing page:

     

     

     

     

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      • Jon ‘hahnmeister’

        It is worth mentioning that while those above sites are good for general information (and Im not bashing them at all), they do have their mistakes. Sanjay’s lighting info isnt always correct… the info for the Giesemann 250 watt DE ‘Coral’ (it is listed as a 13,000K, but its supposed to be the 14,500K) is wrong (it is listed at making more PAR w/ the sheild), along with some of the data in that range of bulbs. Thats all I know, but you never know what else there might be.

        Grim and I have exchanged info and found some variation with the exact PAR readings of the bulbs. I dont know if he has improved his testing methods to add more control to the testing environment, but I think its worth mentioning that even from one bulb to the next (same make, same model, same age) there is variation. I get higher readings for some Giesemann bulbs than ATI’s… he gets the opposite. I burn in my bulbs for 100 hours before testing, and then try to record at 18 months… he tests when they are pretty new as far as I remember.

        What I want to convey is that while these are great sites, nothing can take the place of simply getting that info for yourself. A PAR meter is a VERY useful device that is slightly expensive (then again, so are pH controllers and test kits… which a PAR meter should be considered part of, if not easier to use). The cost of the meter will easily be made back by the insight you will gain as well as the corals you will likely prevent from death by its use. You will see that the numbers that these meters give… the ‘readings’, and the light that they are based on are always changing due to so many environmental factors that a truly quantitative comparison is very hard to produce unless you have lab-like conditions… and then how useful are those results considering how much the glass box with a water surface that is moving and has a tint will ‘screw’ with your exact results anyways? Just get a meter…

      • http://glassbox-design.com/2009/vertex-electronic-metal-halide-ballast/ Vertex Aquaristik Ballast Electronic Metal Halide | glassbox-design.com

        [...] average Sanjay Joshi found the Vertex ballast to draw 7.7% less than the competing Galaxy and Lumatek. While this lower [...]

      • http://www.reef2reef.com/forums/f30/ballast-question-26843.html#post288346 Ballast question

        [...] is some of the info to hold you over: On average Sanjay Joshi found the Vertex ballast to draw 7.7% less than the competing Galaxy and Lumatek. While this lower [...]

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