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2003: 2002: 2001: 2000:
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Q U E S T 9 / 28 / 2000 The Monthly Bulletin of the Madison Aquatic Gardeners Attending the August 31 meeting: Mark Adams, Bill Benz, Louie Blaser, Tim Brown, Val Walassek, Thomas Givnish, John Glaeser, Scott Gordon, Matt Hirvonen, Linda Horvath, Melissa Maurer, Michelle McDowell, Nate Polnaszek, Joel Redman, Barb Radka, David Reese, Lee Rzentkowski, Dave Stalowski, Jim Stich, Keith Strade. Joel Redman and Keith Strade collaborated on a presentation about potential lighting options for aquariums. We should have handouts of Joel's presentation, for those who didn't make this meeting. Our exhibits consisted of some of Michelle McDowell's power compact hoods made from kits. John brought in some commercially available power compacts. Louie Blaser illustrated T8 fluorescent lighting. He had instruments with electronic ballasts and showed different color temperature bulbs. He demonstrated how a T8 and a T12 in a magnetic ballast unit did not work well. It had very low lumens. This whole topic invites follow up research and reporting. Joel compiled a list of areas for us to work on during the coming months: 1) Ballasts - This topic crossed over from T8/T12 to electronic ballasts for VHO lights. This was interesting. With electronic ballasts, maybe VHO is more viable that we thought? Since Lee brought this up, maybe he could provide a sample setup? 2) Ballasts again - Since there seems to be something to be gained from using electronic ballasts no matter what (more efficient, longer life, less color shift), we should get into the practicalities of reballasting. Initially, this is something that we thought we could turn Keith loose on - maybe we still can. 3) Color shift - We don't have a good way to measure this. Maybe we could find some studies or even locate instruments to measure this ourselves? I couldn't hear Thomas Givnish's comment on this - was he saying something about the UW having instrumentation to do this? 4) Prices - Aside from Michelle's information on the cost of DIY Power compact kits, not too much price information was presented. If VHOs are run with electronic ballasts, do they become more cost effective? Do all power compact bulbs last 2 yrs? I think we need to emphasize that the 'best' approach will be different for different people/tanks. 5) Shorter length tubes color shift more quickly, use 4' if at all possible. - I don't think this point was made in the presentation or brought up in discussion. With so many folks in the club using smaller tanks/shorter tubes, this is probably important to say. 6) Power Compact bulbs - I think we may need to reinforce the point that not all Power Compact bulbs are equal in color temperature, color spectrum and length of useful life. Also, I believe it's true (looking for your verification here) that once you choose a manufacturer, you can't necessarily switch to bulbs from another manufacturer as you can with traditional fluorescent? People may need to realize that they're 'locking themselves in' somewhat. 7) PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) - I'm glad we had a chance to at least touch on this. It would certainly be easy to present an overview of the different measures of PAR, PPF PAR and YPF PAR. However, it seems it would be really great to tie this to specific lights. As you mentioned, this info is probably available from the lighting companies, but someone would need to gather it all. 8) Another follow-up item for the lighting topic may be to actually look at some sample spectral curves for different tubes. This may be a good exercise in that we could also show how some manufacturers play tricks with the scale and make it look like the light is more wide-spectrum than it really is.
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