If you want to find out how well a MH bulb will perform with certain MH Ballast go to the link below.
Ed and I went to Sanjay Joshi's presentation last Saturday and it was very interesting and full of a lot of information. He also dispelled several myths that have often been spread on the boards regarding MH lighting.
For example, you can often get 16 - 18 months out of a bulb, the caveat is the ballast, the harder you drive it, the less it will last.
Also, double ended HQI 250W bulbs and ballasts do not give any more light than a 400W mogul bulb, infact in his table of bulb specifications, there is not a 250W HQI bulb in the top 14 bulb/ballast combos.
http://www.reeflightinginfo.arvixe.com/Click on "Search Performance Data" and if you leave all fields clear, you will get all data on all bulbs and ballasts. Each column in the resulting table is sortable by clicking on the top of the column.
The PPFD column is what we care about, that is the measurement of how much light (Photons) is being emitted. The higher the PPFD the better the light.
Also note the CCT column, that is the "Corrected Color Temperature" It will tell you how close a 10k bulb really is to actually being 10K. A lot of mfg are not all that truthful.
And for example, if you look at the XM 400W 10000K bulb and click on the plot, you will find different plots and data for the same bulb but driven with different ballasts.
I will present my notes from the presentation at this Friday's club meeting.
Rick
