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January 5th, 2009
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| | Fish Keeper
| Metal halide
Hi all,
Just had a win with buying a Metal halide lighting system.
lighting gear: one 400W ballast, two lamp holders. Brand new, never used.
Can be used with either a single 400W bulb or two 200W... New value of this stuff is >$200.00,we got it for $40.00 the lot. and its new, never used!
Now heres my Q, Our tank is a 4' x 2' deep, 325lt or 85g.
Would we be better having 2 lights or 1, I think 2 would give a better spead of light. and if we go for 2, what wattage should we go for? we can have a max of 2 x 200watt. | 
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January 5th, 2009
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| | Fish Keeper
| 2 x 200w 14k should do a great job and nice bargain | |
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January 15th, 2009
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| | Moderator
| Holey smokes that is a good deal.
I think the general rule of thumb for metal halides are 1 per 24 inches. So two would work out nicely. | |
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January 15th, 2009
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| | Fish Keeper
| Mike,
I set 1 x 400w over the tank and lets just say it pumps out a lot of light.. To much, and the tank temp went up from 24c to 26c in 8hrs, the room was a fair bit warmer too.
So I think we will keep the MH for when we do the big tank in a couple of years.
Just picked up a Aqua Nova T5LO cheap, 3 x 28w tubes, this will be used more for night time with 1 acentic running.
We have ordered a T5HO Quad for the main lighting.. may get a 2nd if we need to. | |
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January 15th, 2009
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| | Moderator
| I was going to ask where you were scoring these great deals, but then I saw you're in Australia. That won't help us Americans much at all.  | |
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January 15th, 2009
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| | Fish Keeper
| Quote:
Originally Posted by sirdarksol  I was going to ask where you were scoring these great deals, but then I saw you're in Australia. That won't help us Americans much at all. | You got some very cheap aquarium stuff over in the US.
We get hit with a tax over here... GST Goods & Serverses tax... its a tax on anything that not food...
Found another site that is mainly about cichlids ( my brothers a member ) and it all local within 1hrs drive... lots of stuff for sale, tanks, filters, fish, skimmers etc all second hand and cheap. we could have saved a few hundred $ if we found it earlier. | |
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January 15th, 2009
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| | Fish Mentor
| Quote:
We get hit with a tax over here... GST Goods & Serverses tax... its a tax on anything that not food...
| Sounds like sales tax that we pay here. Go buy anything but food at the store and you pay sales tax. It is a state/local tax rather than federal, so the amount you pay can be wildly different from place to place.
Anywho...congrats on the good deals! | |
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January 15th, 2009
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| | Fish Master
| I have a metal Halide system and I can tell you this.....You stole that system! whooooooWhoooooo! Great deal! | |
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January 15th, 2009
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| | Fish Keeper
| That is an awesome deal. Depending on where your tank is, you can raise the lights as far as 12" above the water and it can help with the heat. A store I was at recently had 1 400watt halide over each 4ftx4ft frag tank (6 total) and they were suspended probably 3 feet above the water (though the water was only 6" deep) and you could stick your hand just above the water's surface, and it got HOT!!!
Consider setting up a frag tank? Either way, good deal! | |
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January 20th, 2009
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| | Moderator
| I have two 250w pendents over a 40" L x 22" deep tank. I recommend running two bulbs. My question is, where do you buy 200w aquarium MH bulbs ? Here in the states it 150w, 250w, 400w or 1000w MH bulbs. | |
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January 20th, 2009
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| | Fish Keeper
| I havent looked for 200w bulbs yet.... I set it up with the 400w.
Found out that you must match the bulb wattage to the ballast, so I may have an issue if I can't get 200w bulbs.
Still, got it cheap and know that I could use the bulb holders for 250w if I need to go that way.... and could on sell the 400w.... | |
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