Important-even urgent-info for those into DIY lighting!

[swordfish]

For those of you into homebrew lights, if you're thinkning about making homebrew lights or you just made some, listen up because I learned a lot today.....a lot you may not know and which you need to know.

 

I went to the local warehouse-style hardware store today (name of the place rhymes with "Crowes") to see there what I could possibly use to a suitable lighting upgrade for use in the stock hood on my minbow AGA 7.

 

Anyhow, I didn't find much at the hardware store, but it was none the less a pleasant trip where I got some straight answers from an employee guy who knew what he was doing with lights and electrical products rather than a bunch of guesses and "I-think"s from the usual cadre of dimwits who don't really know what the hell they're talking about.

 

For one, they had a nice selection of ballasts there. No NR-suitable bulbs, but a decent selection of ballasts. I smelled that I am going to end up using a 32 watt power compact smartlight tube in the end so I was going to just get a 32 watt ballast, right? Well, no. They had several ballasts that would handle different wattages but none of them was exactly a 32 watt. So I figured I could I use one that could handle, say, a 40 watt light and just put a 32 watt tube in it, right? I mean that ballast could handle it, right?

 

Absolutely not, I was informed. This isn't anything like an incandescent light socket where you can put anything up to or less than a 100 watt bulb into a 100 watt socket and be okay. A fluorescent tube, by nature, will infinitely suck up and use *all* the power you put into it. A 100 watt inacandescent bulb will use only 100 watts. Ever. By contrast, a 100 watt incandescent flourescent tube hooked up to a 3000 watt ballast will suck up and use all of the the 3000 watts that ballast can feed it, which will of course result in that light buring out in about one minute. Flourescent tubes can be likened to a child who will eat all he can until he explodes, unless he is regulated by someone who keeps him from eating so much. This is why flourescent tubes have ballasts in the first place and do not take their juice straight from the wall....a ballast gives it's accompanying tube just the right amounty of power that tube is supposed to use to have optimal life and put out the kind of light it's supposed to. No more, no less. The ballast acts as a matched, necessary power regulator to the tube.

 

If you put a 32 watt reef-suitable tube into service hooked up to, say, a 28 watt ballast, then the tube will not be putting out the right KIND of light and you are literally risking your corals. The bottom line is that the ballast and the lights powered by them *have* to be rated at the same wattage, or "matched" properly. Very important.

 

I did find one 32 watt ballast there which was meant to power those circular neon lights used in some kitchen fixtures. It did not come with bare wires leading out of it, but rather a square four pin connector. Asked if the bulb I wanted to power with it would fit ithat connector. The answer was no. I asked what would happen if I cut off the connector and re-wired it to fit the bulb. Again, the circular light had some kind of filament in it making it impossible for this ballast to work as I was intending with a power compact light. There were no other 32 watt ballasts there aside from the ones they intended to be used with the circular lights.

 

Even if they had one, you would still have to find, wire in, and then mount a socket between the ballast and the tube to make it all work. There was no sign of any such socket available there, let alone the other necessary hardware. Not that you couldn't make such hardware yourself, but I have done enough handman and DIY proijects in my time to know that the most grand and smoothly-made of all projects can come to a screeching halt when such parts become necessary and are also harder to find or make than you would think, as they seem to always be.

 

My final decision on all of this is to just buy the damn retrofit kit online. I have a seller picked out already, but at least I have satisfied myself that it isn't worth the hair pulling to make it myself. Even if there were such parts available in the world, it would hardly offset the legwork/hassle/gasoline-spent factor to just buy the whole thing as a kit and after all is said and done I'd only be saving a minimal amount of cash art best. And certainly not enough to make it worthwhile. The entire set of components needed to make something like this isn't fully available outside the world of aquarium retailers and suppliers anyway. But to those of you who want to-and who *can*-do it right on your own, I wish you the best.

 

Jeff

[adinsxq]

that's what people are referring to when they say they're "overdriving" or "underdriving" their bulbs.

 

no parts? make your own.

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/showthread...&threadid=11400

[Korbin]

I have that 32 watt circline ballast. I actually did find a bulb that plugs into the socket. Its a 27 watt Lights of America bulb. I wired it up, and it works (doesnt start unless you tap it) but it works. I bought the ballast for $3 at that store that rhymes with Foam Repo.

[Nishant3789]

lol dont ya just hate it when ya spend a n hour typing a nice long post hten figure out its already been known or done? btw, yeah you CAN overdrive normal output florecnecents and we are well aware thatitll lower the lifespan of it, but when you ocmpare it to buying a 200 dollar ballast for VHO and a 20 dollra ballast to just overdrive bulbs, the price of replaceing bubls becomes worth it. thanks for helping though