HQI Shielding

[brewercm]

I haven't been a big fan of the Coralvue bulbs. I had the 14K and they looked very dim to me. I do like the hamilton 14K bulbs that I'm using and have had for quite a while now. I've wanted to give the reeflux 12K a try but that's a lot of $$ to find out I don't care for the color/brightness.

[discuspro]

Are you guys talking about HQI bulbs?

[alton]

Coral Vue 14K and Ushio 14K where DE, the 12K 175w are SE, sorry about the slight Hijack

[hobogato]

cliff, come by on the weekend in the middle of the day and you can see the 12k reeflux DE running on my tank.

[matt]

DE bulbs are reputed to last significantly longer than mogule base bulbs when run on an electronic ballast. That's one of their selling points. If you had one go bad after six months, I would guess you either had a bad bulb or it's mismatched to the ballast you were using. HQI is a type of ballast, not bulb, and you can use an HQI ballast on either mogule or DE bulbs. In the case of DE, they typically need either an HQI or electronic ballast to fire. HQI ballasts drive the bulbs a little harder, which increases the light output, but possibly (I've heard stories both ways) shortens the bulb life.

[apedroza]

Actually HQi does refer to the bulb (Hydrargyrum Quartz iodide) which is run by shooting a high electrical voltage through the gas inside the bulb. These bulbs generally perform much better when used wth electronic ballast.