Bjorn
Gary Lange wrote:
>
> I was sort of surprised that in all of these discussions about ballasts that no
> one mentioned the relatively new ballasts that are mainly available through
> Granger catalogs. They are all over the US, wholesale only. Most owners will
> take cash though :-) I'm sure that those of you that are on the plant list
> have heard Karen Randall or maybe even David Lass talking about these. They
> are typically the 4 foot bulbs that have to operate on a special ballast. You
> merely replace the regular ballast out of your old shoplight with one of these
> and away you go. You need to buy special bulbs but once you've tried them most
> people don't go back to the others. These bulbs are also smaller. The normal
> diameter bulb is called a T-12. These are smaller, the same diameter as many
> of the 15 watt bulbs and are referred to as T-8's. All T-8's are not the same
> though. These new bulbs and the new ballasts need to run together, not mixed
> with old equipment. The bulbs come in 4000 and 5000 and I heard David say that
> some outlets now have them in 6,000K. If you can get the 6,000 I'd go for it,
> depending on price.
> I'll have to go back and recheck some old email, but the jist of these bulbs
> are: They are 32 watts each. There are some other bulbs listed like this that
> are different though. I believe they are made by Osram & GE. Each bulb
> produces something like 20-25% more lumens than a conventional bulb. A
> conventional ballast (for a 2 x 4 foot fixture) uses some 94 watts of
> electricty, "80" going to light the bulbs and 14 + to heat the fishroom, living
> room etc., bonus for the electricity company. These new ballasts supposedly
> really only 64 watts of electricity. And remember you get some 20% brighter
> fixtures. On a 5 shoplight setup that's 470 watts for the old style and only
> 320 watts on the new style or only 68% of your old bill plus a brighter tank.
> Karen Randall has been using this setup for a couple of years now and is very
> happy with the results. Maybe some of you have better looking tanks :-) but I
> kind of doubt it. So how much$$$$? The last prices I saw were $21 for a 2
> bulb ballast and $31 for a 4 bulb ballast. The prices on the lights were
> strange, something like $5 for the 4000K and $7 for the 5,000K. David Lass is
> in the lighting business and was the one that told us about these bulbs. At
> Monsanto they changed all of the bulbs in their labs and buildings to these
> bulbs. Literally thousands of bulbs and fixtures. While they were changing
> over you would walk from one lab that had the new fixtures back over to your
> dingy old lab, that really felt underlite! The increased brightness and the
> higher K value (they're using 5000K bulbs) have really made a difference.
>
> Gary Lange
> gwlange at STLNET.com
> Rainbowfish Study Group of North America
> http://home.stlnet.com/~gwlange/rainbowfish.index.html
>
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