Bulb suggestions with PFO ballast?

[JimD]

Judging from the pic, the lighting youre using doesnt look all that bad, the rock and the sand look very white, not too bad in my opinion. As Jim said, Im experimenting with the 400W XM bulb, so far its not too bad as far as color goes with 110W of 10K PC supplimenttion, the lamp was "virgin" when installed and I anticipate it to turn a more crisp white after a week or so burn in period. As far as intensity goes, this lamp is a freakin power house! Very similar to my 250W Iwasaki, just a different color. Its taking me a little time to get used to the change, but I think its gonna be just perfect!
Jim

[Chris]

Maybe you can stagger the VHO so that you get more coverage on the ends.

I think the AB 10K lamp would be nice. It's supposed to have an actual color temp of 13,000K.

Staggering won't work... the 2 VHO's in the back would just end up covering the overflows than lighting much of the tank.

No one has any used 250W bulbs laying around? Man.. you people are spoiled with your 400W's of lighting. :P

[matt]

Chris;

Get the hamilton/Ushio 10ks. They're the only higher kelvin bulb i know of that come close to the PPFD of the iwaskis, which I assume is what you're running. Supposedly, there's a newer iwasaki "R" bulb which is not as yellow as the old ones. You could try those, too. Man, I've heard lots of bad things from folks running bluer bulbs for any length of time. John Moffett used to complain about 'em all the time. I've got an old magizine around that did a pretty thorough analysis of 250W MH bulbs for PPFD and CCT, if you want to have a look at it. But basically what it said was that DE HQI's were the highest in PPFD, then iwasakis, then Ushios, and everything else was way lower. If I remember, the CCT for the DE was about 11K, the ushios 10k, and the new iwasakis around 7k.

On my next tank, I'm definitely going with DE HQI. I'll just start saving now.

HTH
Matt