Cheap HIDs

["Richard J. Sexton" <richard at aquaria_net>]

>> ...I still maintain the on-the-cheap way is to get a
>> sodium or mercury outdoor "safety" light and use a
>> 5 gal coffee can cut in half as a refelctor.
>> They're about $50 US up here for 75W Na and
>> 150W Hg.
>
>And I've always thought of the _combination_ of the two as the least
>expensive, most "powerful" "GroLux" available. The MVs tend to peak out the
>phototropic curve while the HPSs usually fall within 50 nms or so of most
>plants' photosynthetic response curves. And the MVs also throw enough of the
>greens to really kick off red plants without much need for things like
>"phosphate pulsing"...

Sure it makes perfect sense to me too. Look at the development
of fluorescent tubes. From the cool/warm white that have an out
put spectra that looks a bit like a gaussian curve centered
around green to the grow lux type pink/purple tubes that
are basically flat with two huge spikes at red and blue to
the newer triphosphot tubes that has spikes in red green
and blue and not much anywhere else, then a pair of
HID lihts with spectral spikes in the right places is relly
not much different from using triphosphour fluors as far
as light output spectra is converned.

I don't know how many people here remember this but there
was a guy on alt.aquaria a very long time ago that asked
about using MV; eveyrone said don't bother it won't work,
wrong output spectra, it's all blue blah blah blah and
he tried it anyway and two weeks later they were still
arguing about the theoretical issues while the guy was
offering to give away the handsfull of plants he suddenly
found himself with.

Bottom line: if there's a lot of light I wouldn't be
that concerned what the color of the light was a whole
lot.



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