One fact that many people are neglecting is the additional cost it tacks to
cool down ones house with the addition of lights. Donw here in Texas (with
our marvelous warm winter weather) we usually have to start running the air
conditioning about April 1 to November-December. The additional heat output
from MH lighting would cause me to run my air conditioning even more. So
this would be a MAJOR consideration in my thinking about using this type of
lighting! Flourescents are remarkable cool in comparison, even when I am
running many of them.
I used to have a 125 gallon reef tank and we were running 6 6' VHO bulbs.
I was able to remotely locate the ballast out in the garage and run the
wiring from the ballast through the ceiling (routed through a piece of grey
PVC conduit). I could imagine that this would be possible with MH ballasts
also, but I have found that the bulbs themselves crank out tons of heat!!
In areas of the world where you would have to run heaters on your tanks year
round this isn't a problem...but I down even want to consider the option of
running a chiller on my tanks or tunning the airconditioning at 75 F. ...i
am not made of money!!!
My $1.98 worth of thought (the rates have gone up!!)
John Davis (marooned in aggieland)
Department of Biology
http://http.tamu.edu:8000/~jmd9261
jdavis at bio_tamu.edu
jmd9261 at tam2000_tamu.edu
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