HQ light help pls

[austinsdad]

I have this light fixture.

Coralife 72 Inch Aqualight Pro, 3x150W HQI MH Lamp + 4x96W PC + 4x1W Lunar LED

Comes with, and I have re-ordered once, the 150w, 10,000k double ended HQI bulbs.

Will a 14,000k or higher bulb work in the fixture also? I hear good things about the higher K rating.

 

[ccCapt]

Any 150w DE bulb should work in that fixture. The higher the K temp, the bluer the bulb should be. Alot depends on the manufacturer. 2 diff brand 10K bulbs can look totally different.

Here's Sanjay's Performance Data on all the 150w bulbs he tested.
PPFD - Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density, which is the amout of usable light the bulb puts out
CCT - Correlated Color Temp, which is the true K temp of the bulb as tested
Also note the difference in results when a shield is used. You are using DE shielded bulbs.
The AB 10k bulbs look nice according to those results. XM (XDE) 15k looks like they have nice color, but not very good PPFD. I think cmor recently bought the Ushio 10k's.

Here's the results for the 175w bulbs I use. Look at the CCT. These bulbs are a crisp white color.

 

[austinsdad]

The only 150w in the 14k variety was the Aquaconnect brand. Hmmm, not thanks.

Looks as thought the 10k is a briter white from all accounts I've seen. Since I've also got the 4x96w actinics, I'll be sticking with the 10ks.

Now, for which brand..... That's another whole day googling.

Thanks again Larry.

 

[ccCapt]

I'm really not familiar with 150w bulbs except for Sanjays info, but what's wrong with Aquaconnect bulbs? The PPFD looks OK, but I see there is nothing listed for CCT. I'm not sure, but I never really saw any bulb rated over about 16000 (16k), so maybe whatever Sanjay used to measure the color didn't work right at higher K values (this is a total guess...lol). I would assume, based on results of alot of other high K bulbs, those Aquaconnect 14K are pretty blue looking.
Send cmor a PM. Ask him which bulbs he got and how they are. I'm pretty sure he got Ushio 10K.