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TheCampbells
Fri, 2nd Dec 2005, 01:08 PM
I met a guy a the lfs and he invited me to look at his tank. We visited for a while and I relentlessly picked his brain about his beautiful tank. When we got to the lighting subject, He told me about actinic lights and ballast and upon inspecting them, something didn't add up... His ballast has a label on it that says 40 watt max and has two outputs. So it is a 80 watt ballast, correct???? His two bulbs, however, are 48 inch 110 watt vho bulbs. Is this safe???? Or a fire hazard?????

Thanks for the input
dwdenny
Fri, 2nd Dec 2005, 03:36 PM
an NO ballast should not even fire a VHO lamp at least I would think so. I am no expert but sounds a lot on the unsafe side to me. Did the bulbs look like they were bright like a VHO should be or very dull looking. Are you sure they were VHO lamps? The 48" NO lamps are 40w if I am not mistaken. HTH
TheCampbells
Fri, 2nd Dec 2005, 04:32 PM
I took my ballast and lights to his house( aro ballast 440 watts ) and his lights are duller than mine, but his bulbs are uri 110 watts.
dwdenny
Fri, 2nd Dec 2005, 05:31 PM
wow that is surprising that they even fire up. Of course with your lghting system they will fire just fine.
TheCampbells
Fri, 2nd Dec 2005, 05:37 PM
I had the 440 watt setup stored at the house, I use to have 2x400 mh and 440 watts of vho and I took the vho out about a month ago. I now have 2x400 and 2x40 watts of actinic. I use 15k bulbs so the actinic are just a dawn dusk type setup. I was just concerned because I didn't think they would even light it up. I would just hate to see this beautiful tank hood burn up because he is using those bulbs.
dwdenny
Fri, 2nd Dec 2005, 05:42 PM
I don't think that it would be a problem really unless it was the other way around but like I said I am no expert. He is under powering the lamps rather then firing them at thier capabilitlities. Like I said I am surprised they even fire up at all. I would ask him why he is doing it that way and see if he really knows that he is under powering them.
TheCampbells
Fri, 2nd Dec 2005, 06:06 PM
Our lfs has to order the bulbs, they didn't have any 40watts but they had some 110 watt bulbs, ( probably the ones I ordered that took forever to get in.... they probably sold him mine and reordered some for me )....
TheCampbells
Sat, 3rd Dec 2005, 12:09 PM
lfs says it will be Thursday before they can get the bulbs.....
Will these be okay until then????