awesome job
 

great article! now plese replciate this work for Actinics, NO and VHO bulbs and ballasts! By next month please.
;)

:lol:

It was a lot of work. I appreciate the kudo!

yeah, it was a lot of work, at least you got the spellings correct, me? I can't even spel OHV properly! what's next?

was the Coralvue 12k bulb tested there REEFLUX line..?

Coralvue changed their whole product line after their bulbs were tested. So the reeflux line was not tested.

excellent test
 

i learned more in that short article about mh bulbs than i have in about two years of using those things i've been running a single 250 watt 10000K bulb on a 55 gal tank-it was givin' to me and had only been used for a couple of months. i only have the one because when i went to get another one, i wasn't expecting the higher price tag. so i tried putting it closer to the center of my tank. needless to say, this was not a good idea. check out my pics to see what these bad boys do to plastic. my 55 has become my sump after a little repairs.

Thanks. I knew nothing about MH lamps before I started. So it was a real learning experience for me too.

Yeah you have to be careful with those lamps they get crazy hot!!

Great job Joe! All the charts made perfect sense to me. I couldn't believe how low the output of my XM 15 k's is. I will be trying different bulbs when it's time to replace mine. As long as they give me the same coloration, with the same power usage, I might as well pick bulbs that turn that power into usable light. Great job, and thank you for all the time you spent on it!

Joe, I hope you don't mind, I made another graph from your data. I calculated the "PAR efficiency" similar to what Sanjay has done with his more recent tests. I divided the PAR values (in PPFD) for each bulb and ballast by the corresponding power (in watts) and graphed the values. The curves would be similar but not identical to curves generated just from the PAR values. The efficiency values though give a slightly better idea of "bang for the buck" so to speak. It's interesting to note that comparing the highest to lowest values gives almost a 4X difference. IOW, to get the same PAR levels to your corals would require 4 times as much electricity with the least efficient bulbs compared to the most efficient. With electricity prices what they are, this is something people may want to pay more attention to.
Here's the graph:
[IMG]http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/7469MH_PAR_EFFICIENCY.jpg[/IMG]

I also find it interesting that the electronic ballasts don't seem to be any more efficient in terms of light output per watt than the non-electronic PFO ballasts.

That chart is great. Thanks.