HQI vs. Regular Metal Halide

[ShAgMaN]

What are the differences between HQI metal halide and regular metal halide set ups besides HQI not requiring a remote ballast?

[alton]

HQI lamps require a protective lense and SE lamps do not. Coral Magazine had a great articile on this. I switched from DE to SE when my DE lamps where losing 50% at 8 months. I have had 12K Reef flux SE last up to 18 months with only 10% drop off in lighting. Some swear by them(DE) I know on my bosses tank which has Giesemen lamps they last almost 2 years. I think the trick here once again is to match the lamp to the ballast.

[Big_Pun]

HQI lamps require a protective lense and SE lamps do not. Coral Magazine had a great articile on this. I switched from DE to SE when my DE lamps where losing 50% at 8 months. I have had 12K Reef flux SE last up to 18 months with only 10% drop off in lighting. Some swear by them(DE) I know on my bosses tank which has Giesemen lamps they last almost 2 years. I think the trick here once again is to match the lamp to the ballast.

how did you measure the drop off, also what kind of ballast where you running the DE, magnetic, electronic?

[justahobby]

I haven't seen an HQI setup for reef hobbyists that didn't have a remote ballast. What set ups are you referring to?

[ShAgMaN]

The way I understood it - HQI setups have the ballast in the fixture - as opposed to larger ballast which is commonly wired a distance from the standard metal halide bulb fixture. But I'm not sure on this, so I guess I'm asking for clarification here.

I've only owned LED's and power compacts, and I'm looking at either t5's or metal halide/t5 combo for my frag tank. Thing is, I found an economical HQI/t5 combo, but I'm not sure how efficient/reliable/effective they are.

[RayAllen]

When I was running my HQI I loved it. My ballast was remote, as mentioned above I have not seen one built in either. I prefer them over SE also because the bulbs are much small and the fixtures just tend to look better. You dont have a huge reflector to deal with.

[ErikH]

Electronic ballasts are there, they are just much smaller. Magnetic Ballasts are those big 'ol bastards that no one likes to pickup! I have 900w of light on a 75, lol. You need to run good ballasts to drive the GOOD bulbs. "Economical" is just another word for cheap! If you have some free time, you can come looky at my tank.

[Big_Pun]

i run a reeflux de, on a coralvue ballast(electronic), bulb is 6-7 months old and i havent noticed any issues, you can check out my setup to see how small the ballast and pendents are

[justahobby]

HQI's that I've seen with a built in ballast are used industrial and gardening sections of Lowe's of HD. The upside would be saving space, the downside would be the ballast going out while your fixture is still good or vise versa.

Cheap HQI/ T5 combos like fishneedit.com and aquatraders.com will have remote ballasts too.

HQI's tend to penetrate deeper and be good for 24" plus tanks. Mogul (depending on the reflector) will give you more spread for say a shallow cube with a big footprint. These two types are usually mixed up and used for both or either types of aquariums. If you check sanjay's site and compare SE vs. DE, DE will usually carry a higher PAR.

[corruption]

There are a few HQI fixtures with internal ballasts, but they add a lot of weight to the hood. My new IceCap Reef Illuminations has dual 250w HQI with internal ballasts... Sucker weighs 54lbs :) the ballast also adds heat, hence most being remote..

-Justin

[RayAllen]

I ran a Mini PFO HQI Pendant with a 12k reeflux. With a IceCap ballast. NICE! I miss it, lol

[tony]

i run a reeflux de, on a coralvue ballast(electronic), bulb is 6-7 months old and i havent noticed any issues, you can check out my setup to see how small the ballast and pendents are


i ran the same for more then 12 months at a time with no problems

[alton]

The DE lamps where coral vue 14K 250w(before Reeflux) and coral vue electronic ballast(which I still use, but with SE Reeflux lamps. I use a light meter that measures foot candles, when the lamps where new I read 3800 ftc at the water level and when my SPS crashed I read 1500 ftc. And you could not tell the difference by looking at it, there was not a color change in either lamp, nor could you tell the lamps had lost so much.

[corruption]

How long did that reduction take? About 6-7 months?

-Justin

[CoryDude]

I've always thought DE had more "pop" in their color and better depth penetration than SE. But, again that's just a personal preference.

Coral growth wise, I haven't seen a big difference in using 250w SE and 250w DE.

[alton]

Justin if you are talking about my experience 8 months. When my SPS crashed I checked everything and when everything checked out OK I checked lighting and found thoses results. And I know a light meter is not a par meter but over 50% drop in lighting output I would think would be proportional to 50% drop in PAR output. Since DE is smaller than SE you would naturally have a more dense light in a smaller area, kind of like a flood light versus spot light effect(probably not a very comparison but hopefully you get the idea)