Any experience with Plasma lighting?
- Thread starter ReefCAKE
- Start date
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Just set up a 150 with two of the Seashine plasmas from Stray Light Optical. I LOVE them! Really anxious to see how they work in the long run, but for now I am impressed. Using a Reefkeeper Light + ALC for dimming sunrise/sunset. I need to get a build thread started, but here are some pictures of the tank going through dimming in the evening.
luke33
2500 Club Member
Very cool Jester! Have you taken par measurements and can you get the lights to look more 14-20k? Only drawback i see with them is expensive and the more yellow look. Your pics look a bit blue though. What wattage are they running at?
Hey Luke, I'm getting the club PAR meter in a week or so and will post some complete PAR reading - at a recent club meeting we did a quick read on them and got 2884 at six inches in air and 196 at 48 inches in air. As you dim them, you get more blue spectrum. My gut feeling is you could get pretty close to a 14K and still have plenty of PAR. Unfortunately, the pics make it look more yellow than it actually is - I'm really loving the full throttle "daylight" look for want of a better term. The colors on fish and corals are more natural, but you do lose the "pop" you get from 20K or actinics (guess you could supplement). As for cost - each of my fixtures cost $995 and the bulbs are scheduled to last for at least 5 years running 12 hours per day. Figure some nice 250 MH with Actinics and bulb replacement and it works out OK for plasmas. Much like LEDs, only changing the bulb on the plasmas is MUCH easier!
My lights are 36 inches from the bottom of the tank, and still look good to me. Almost no heat transfer because the lights are up higher.
Off topic, the 160 cone skimmer I got from you is rocking!!
makingbubbles
Broke, Poor, Cheap Reefer
Dude 900$-1000$ a light. Thats more than my whole set up.
Oh, you can for sure get by much cheaper...I just have the luxury of getting what I wanted. The other lights I looked at (LEDs and MH/T5 combos) were all roughly in that price range. You always pay a premium for being one of the first users of a technology. I'm just having fun being one of the first!
makingbubbles
Broke, Poor, Cheap Reefer
Ha ha im so cheap im thinking about buying an Odyssey t5 set up (switching out bulbs and ballast) as an upgrade. But if i had the $$$$ i would go plasma. I would also have a sweet viper and a model gf.
luke33
2500 Club Member
Makingbubbles, no reason to change out those ballasts as they are fine. Your right startup is expensive but think about it this way. For his tank he would need 3 250w mh's to run to get the same coverage. So an average of $60 a bulb over 5yrs he would have to swap them out 5x's or 180bux x's 5 so thats $900 in bulb changes in that time. Also if he's only running 300w of plasma vs the 750-1200w of mh depending on eballast vs magnetic ballast he's saving anywhere from 20-60bux per month in electricity, so figure that savings out as well : ) So the upfront costs are more for the plasma but savings are greater.
Jester those guys are STRONG! Very cool on the dimmer, i'm sure we'll see more of that in the future with plasma lighting. Any clue what wattage your running with both of those on? (good to hear on the skimmer)
Jester those guys are STRONG! Very cool on the dimmer, i'm sure we'll see more of that in the future with plasma lighting. Any clue what wattage your running with both of those on? (good to hear on the skimmer)
Not sure on what is out there...I have only heard of one other plasma fixture on the market and it is a 250 W. The other big change is heat - these are far enough from the tank that I don't get any significant heat exchange (tank temp ncrease of about 1 degree over the course of the day). If I was using 3 250W MH, it would be cooking and I would have a chiller online. I have heard rumors of some new color spectrums in the works, which would be nice. I am in a minority and really like the "sunshine" look these lights give at full power.
