can power compact ballast run t5 bulbs

[Jeff]

i have a 2 dual 65wbulb power compact ballast and the question is can i run t-5 bulbs off of it. i would rather go with t-5 bulbs instead of pc for my 30 gal. sea horse tank wich will also house a bunch if zoas.

[hobogato]

that is a great question - tagging along.

[blueboy]

Hmmn...?

[alteredego]

Isn't a 55W PC just a 55W T5HO just bent in half. They have to run along the same principal to fire and pulse. I'll get a T5HO bulb today and mod it to a pc ballast. I'll let you know the outcome.

[mathias]

fire.... jk

[urban79]

just check the pulse rating and wattage. But I think it should work if everything matches..

[caferacermike]

Isn't it strange that there are so many ballasts? I've always wondered as well. I honestly cannot give a scientific answer as to how it all works and that bums me out.

I can say for certainty that I just bought a new fulham ballast from Frederic at coralreefbazaar and it is quite universal. It states that it can fire 220w of flouro lighting in just about any combination you can dream of.

The mor eimportant thing would be to make sure you have it wired correctly. I was surprisef to find out that my new ballast came with 5 wires. 4 red one yellow. The yellow wire had to be jumped over to 2 pins of each PC bulb for a total of 4 connections. The 4 red wires needed to be twinned to 2 wires. The 2 wires then needed to be jumped together to the 2 remaining pins. I am unsure why they recommended not just dead ending the wires at each pin. So I guess I'm saying that there are several ways to wire them. For reference I'd visit the Fulham website and look at wire schematics for their ballasts. You select a ballast, say the Workhorse 7, pick the pc bulbs and wattage that you currently run. Then it will tell you how to wire a PC combo to that ballast. Use the same ballast for your T5 plans. and see how different the diagrams are. It should be close to what you'd need to do with your ballast.

[acrofreak]

You need to make sure the ballast has end of life (i think that's what they call it) feature in it. That way if bulb goes out the ballast won't keep trying to fire the bulb.

[Ed]

I run 2X54w T5HO bulbs retroed into an Oceanic 2X55W PC light strip (using the original PC ballast) with no problems.

[alteredego]

I hooked all of this up without any problems. My wiring was very crude, but functional. As long as the wattage, voltage, freq, match they work fine. I may clean up the install and use it over my sump/fuge. Do make sure your using a 54w t5 though with the 55w pc ballast. And never take the "manufature buffer" for granted.

[alton]

It depends on the Ballast manufacture. The ballast in the Orbit fixtures are Work Horse 5 or 7 and if you go to there website they have multiple wiring diagrams for T5HO, VHO and Compact Fluorescent lamps. Most ballast are self leveling(Not sure if that is the right terminology?) In other words you can run up to a cetain amount of wattage of lamps as in 1 96 watt CF or 2 65w or 2 T5HO. If your ballast isn't listed for multiple lamps, just because it works you could cause an electrical fire down the road.