need a little metal halide 101 information

[tanks-a-lot]

i was wondering if anyone could tell me if you can use a 250 watt mh bulb with a 400 mh ballast. didn't know if it worked on the same principle as flourecents or not and never saw any discussion on it.

 

[liquid]

Hello tanks-a-lot and welcome to reefs.org! To get the most out of your reefs.org experience please take a look at this webpage describing all the features of this website: http://www.reefs.org/library/howto.html

To answer your question: using any other bulb with any other ballast will shorten it's lifetime and potentially cause it to blow up. If you have a 400 watt ballast, use a 400 watt bulb. Halides are very different than standard incadescent bulbs. You can't just screw in a different wattage like you can w/ incadescents.

hth

Shane

 

[danmhippo]

Not really. What brand of ballast and model you have? I know there are some makes of the ballast that enables you to customize your configuration.

 

[tanks-a-lot]

thanks for the info. Looking into every aspect of setting up a 110 reef. Lighting is a huge priorety for me since doing it twice is costly.

 

[Texas2Turkey]

Tanks-A-Lot,

Your profile says you live in Mass.

You ever been to a Boston Reefkeepers Meeting?

If not you should check them out!

www.bostonreefers.org

Hope to see ya there!

 

[O P Ing]

hi.
AFAIK, multi-tapped ballast enables you to have different driving voltage (110V, 220V, 480V, etc), but not different ANSI specification output (400W MH, 250MH, etc). So don't put a 250W bulb on a ballast that is not designed to drive it, unless you are absolutely sure.