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Re: More MH lighting questions....
>I should mention that this puppy is in the living room.....2X250W MH might
>make the living room appear like a hockey rink..(appropiate being a
>Canuck..)
[snip]
>Ballast roasting...I presume the ballast just dies...a function of heat??
You can build little light "shields" with smoked acrylic or aluminum
flashing. The shield then gets adjusted so that the light is "framed" to
the tank, and doesn't spill over. Theatrical lighting techs would call it a
tophat... Anyway, you can get the flashing at most hardware stores, the
smoked acrylic (along with a bunch of other colors) can be purchased in
small quantities from US Plastics in Lima, OH (www.usplastic.com). BTW,
they also carry a very nice kind of vinyl tubing that is really flexible,
stays that way, and is much cheaper than what I've seen at Home Depot and
the like.
>Noise is a issue, I found with a overflow skimmer, wet/dry, air pump and a
>Iwaki pump to be a bit noisy...
>When the Iwaki pump blew, I ran the tank on two powerheads with sponges
>attached. This setup was silent but the skimmer/pump was much more >efficient
>removing debris, etc.
My own ballasts are all very quiet. Some people have noisier ballasts. Not
sure why some seem to be louder than others, but that seems to be the case.
Even a loud ballast won't be as bad as one of the beefy Iwaki pumps though,
and the noise from a ballast is just a low hum. If you want total silence
the electronic CF ballasts make *no noise*.
I suspect that a lot of the noisy ballasts are mounted in enclosures that
aren't solidly constructed and thus resonate or "buzz" while the ballast is
in operation. Haven't looked into this much though.
-Bill
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Waveform Technology
UNIX Systems Administrator