Halide ballast/bulb questions

[Lemec]

I’m looking to upgrade my tank to a 4x2x2 footprint, tank will be predominantly SPS. I had thought about doing 3 x Mitras with T5’s, but I have an old but unused Sfiligoi XR6 sitting in a storage unit from an old build that “shrunk” on me, lol. It has dual 250w DE halides with 4x T5’s. Knowing that these fixtures were once one of the best out there, I thought I’d get some feedback and ideas about using the XR6 over the set up. If I do this, I’d need to wire a ballast and pick the right bulb combo to really make the colors come out. I have experience with T5’s and LEDs with SPS, just not halides. Would the Reefbrite electronic 250 ballast or the icecap ballast be better? Any better recommendations? Thoughts?

 

[jda]

Get m80 ballasts from Hamilton and run 14k Phoenix bulbs - DE bulbs are HQI and require a HQI ballast (which is ANSI m80)... electronic ballast on "super lumens" or "HQI" will get close. As for the T5s, then all kinds of opinions here... but anything from all Blue Plus, to Actinics mixed with 6500k will be given.

Sfiligoi are still awesome fixtures. MH and T5s are a gold-standard type of setup for SPS.

 

[mtraylor]

Thats a Kick $ss lighting fixture. I would be using that unless you dont want to deal with the bulbs, etc. JMO.
If you decide to use LED's, then the mitras are a great fixture.

 

[Lemec]

Get m80 ballasts from Hamilton and run 14k Phoenix bulbs - DE bulbs are HQI and require a HQI ballast (which is ANSI m80)... electronic ballast on "super lumens" or "HQI" will get close. As for the T5s, then all kinds of opinions here... but anything from all Blue Plus, to Actinics mixed with 6500k will be given.

Sfiligoi are still awesome fixtures. MH and T5s are a gold-standard type of setup for SPS.

Is that just their regular MH 250 watt ballast they have for 25% off right now on the Hamilton website? I didn’t see anything about the m80

 

[Lemec]

Never mind, I found the M80 ballasts...