Flourescent Ballasts

[spesh]

My new tank's lighting system is, frankly, crap. Its very 'home made' and is pretty substandard so I'm going to set about redoing it all.


Due to the shape of the tank and the makeup of the hood i'm stuck with the sizes that are in there (which is 18" and 24") but the ballasts with them are old and producing an awful lot of heat so without checking its already apparent that they are old are quite inefficient. The also have an annoying mild flicker.

I've had a trawl around and premade ballasts for aquariums are silly prices compared to what I'm used to paying (I'm an industrial electrician btw) so I'm thinking of replacing the ballasts with some nice high frequency, efficient items.

The question I have is is there anything extra special about the tubes that are supplied for aquariums? I've had one of the ballasts apart and it seems to just be run of the mill stuff aside from the tube connections being waterproof.

I'm considering some dimmable ballasts too and possibly trying to rig them to ramp up slowly on power on and die off slowly on power off. No idea how i'm going to do that yet, but it has to be possible. Just think it'd be nicer for the fish rather than a harsh switch on and off which is far from natural.

 

[rabbut]

The aquarium tubes will work in any Flue balast with the correct wattage, so long as the correct end caps for T5 or T8's are fitted to it Dimmable baslasts though I am unsure of... If nobody else OK's it, I'd play safe and get a bog standord on-off balast without the dimmable bit, to avoid any potential issues. I can't see there being any, but I'm not 100% that there aren't any

HTH
Rabbut

 

[spesh]

There's a lighting rep going into work tommorow so i've asked my boss to ask the question

 

[BINKSY]

Im also a electrician, and i know you can get dimmable ballasts, but i think they will have a high price tag. You can also get them for T5 lighting, as at work we have just finihed a project using dimmable T5 lighting.


Cheers Gordon

 

[spesh]

indeed dimmable ballasts are not cheap but are less expensive than "off the shelf" external ballasts as sold at the LFS.

I've found some reasonably prices dimmable ballasts (bonus is they are High Frequency so no flicker at all) that run on a 1-10v ramp so I'm going to try and rig something up to ramp the lights on and off slowly over an hour. It has to be possible and I'd like to try and do it for less than the cost of premade ballast units from the LFS