Re: Light and Barr

[Bill Wichers <billw at waveform_net>]

>Lights:
>
>A guy here at work just gave me a High Pressure Sodium light, 250watts. Is
>this any good for growing aquarium plants? I'm setting up a mangrove tank,
>would it be good for that? He's also giving me a metal halide bulb (I guess
>he was really into growing some sort of plant in his basement when he was
>younger. Go figure!) Any source known for an inexpensive metal halide
>housing/ ballast? I don't know too much about these sorts of lights. I've
>also been tinkering with halogen and xenon bulbs. Neither seem to work that
>well.

Yes, you can use it. You probably won't want to use it over your tank 
though if you want to look in your tank. HPS lights are great grow lights 
but since they lack any real blue component they are horrible for color 
rendering and tend to make everything look strange.

MH Ballasts are available reasonably cheaply from wholesale electrical 
supply houses. I can get 175 watt metal halide ballasts for about $30 
locally that way. They are "bare" though -- you need to build them into a 
suitable chassis. I've seen a lot of halide setups on Ebay, just do a 
search for "halide" and check what comes up.

Halogen tends to run a bit hot, but can make for interesting highlight-type 
lighting effects if you use the little undercounter-type fixtures (20 watt 
or so). The only readily available xenon lamps I'm familiar with are the 
pulsed-discharge types like those used in strobe lights and aircraft 
warning beacons. Not sure what other type you might be trying?

         -Bill
*****************************
Waveform Technology
UNIX Systems Administrator