VHO Florescent Bulbs

[William]

Do you need a special balast/light strip for them or will the run in a standard lightstrip?

 

[onebadgsx]

yes it requires a ballast to handle the gain in wattage. uri, icecap, and some workhorses can power vho's. i personally have a icecap 660 running 4 110 watt bulbs and a workhorse 7 running a 5 th bulb.

 

[loganj]

You also need to use VHO rated end caps instead of the standard ones. What ballast you need really depends on what size bulbs you want to run and how many. I like the Icecap ballasts and have had good service with them. They are repairable and Icecap has a great service dept. To me, that is an advantage. Although you could probably retro a VHO bulb and endcaps into a standard strip, I think it would be impractical to do so. You can build an enclosure for them with a good reflector as easily as you could convert the old strip. ARO and Fulham (workhorse series) will also power the VHO tubes.

 

[William]

Well, I'm trying to find an inexpensive alternative to the CF lights I was supposedp to recieve.

The tank is NOT set up yet, however I want to have enough lighting to support corals and anemones in the future, and I want to have decent lighting on both tank and sump.

 

[William]

is 160 a decent price for a IceCap 660?

 

[onebadgsx]

deleted post

 

[loganj]

That's about right...maybe a little below average for the 660. Really, on a 30 gal tank, 96w PC's would be hard to beat. They are already just the right length and you should be able to set up PC's for about the same price as VHO. I like PC's a little better than VHO's, but that's just my opinion. You can run them on an Icecap, but I would look into a Fulham Workhorse 7...it will run 2 of the 96w bulbs. You should be able to get one of those for $40 or so.

 

[William]

I was wanting to run 4 bulbs, or would that be absolute overkill?


I also want to light my sump, to.

 

[r95rdstr]

I had planned on using 4 VHO's above my 125, but decided to go PC instead. Using two Workhorse ballasts, four new PC bulbs and DIY parts, you can build a 4x96 watt PC system for $300 or less - very comparable to VHO prices. The PCs run alot coler than VHOs, too.