Radium metal halide bulbs will not be produced anymore!

[jda]

I appreciate the differing opinions. Allows me to consider, think and question. It is the backbone of what makes free speech work.

The way that it was explained to me is that if a light does not light a general area, then nobody cares... yet. Reptile lights, tanning beds, film development lights, aquarium lights, light bulbs for your car or stereo equipment, heat lamps for food, medical lights for therapy, among others are ok. Lights to grow the hippie lettuce are ok. Reefing lights are ok. They did close some loopholes for commercial lights that only the manufacturers could argue were still needed... like keeping HPS warehouse lights in a large store because you had houseplants in a small part of it.

What amazes me is that two of our larger stores put in solar lights and T5 and took their LED bay lights out... like in the last year. I asked the manager and he said that corporate does all of this, but they like the look better. I tried to research to see if the solar stuff counted towards your allotment... found a nothing, but I didn't look that hard.

 

[Yanir34]

Why every time someone posts a zombie thread everyone goes bananas? There will always be a replacement for a replacement for as long as we live. Its why were sitting where we are right now. I can guarantee you that radium wasn't available when I was running aqua medics 20 years ago but now this is where we are? Why is everyone so scared these days? Thats not how we were founded.

I will tell you why - because the so called "replacement" (this case , it's LED's) will never be 10% of MH !
The ability of this unique bulbs to generate artificial light that is the closest to real sunlight, is simply unbeatable !
I have used in my 16 years of reefing in all lighting setups ....With MH I got the most healthy, colorful and strongest corals ! this is true fact .

 

[jez]

As much as it's sad to see the decline of some well-proven lighting that I certainly loved and cut my teeth on it is the inevitable evolution. I say inevitable as back in the day I remember speaking about getting the 400 watt lamps in the UK and back then their market for the Blau version was large public spaces monuments and buildings they made it for the architectural work. Obviously, they saw an uptick from the Reef hobby over the years and then a downtick as the world went T5 mad, and then another downtick as Led took hold.

As for their original core market architecture etc that died a long time ago as Blue panel lights for exteriors have been flying out the doors of China since the early advent of high-powered Led.

As for a Chinese supplier picking it up, I am sure there are still factories making Metal Halide in China but as China is one of the biggest advocates for Led and led Manufacturing I don't see even if you could get the quality and spectrum right a few 1000 reef enthusiasts is not going to pay for a custom run with a custom phosphor gas etc. MOQ would possibly be 10k?

I am sure Radium would have offered their biggest customer the opportunity of a custom or final run before they literally turned the lights off but the fact nobody is raising their hand around the aquatic trade saying don't worry we have 10 or 20k lamps stashed which will last us the next 5 years blah blah. The demand is simply not there other than with a few hardcore reef users.

End of an era

 

[SpSDrew]

Has anyone ever tried the $20 Marine color bulbs from Ebay? Debating ordering one to compare par/spectrum.

 

[Troylee]

Has anyone ever tried the $20 Marine color bulbs from Ebay? Debating ordering one to compare par/spectrum.

I haven’t but from the research I’ve done they’re not bad bulbs but they have qc issues.. from what I got you gotta order a case and mix and match bulbs to get a few of the same color.. if you just buy 3 and put them on your tank there’s a good chance the spectrum won’t match on them.

 

[SpSDrew]

I haven’t but from the research I’ve done they’re not bad bulbs but they have qc issues.. from what I got you gotta order a case and mix and match bulbs to get a few of the same color.. if you just buy 3 and put them on your tank there’s a good chance the spectrum won’t match on them.

Might be worth the shot just to compare to other bulbs I have while they are still around. And at worst, I waste $60 buying a 10k,14k, and 20k bulb.

 

[MinnieMouse2]

I just got an official email from my friends in Germany at the Radium factory saying that both Radium bulbs (250W and 400W) will not be in production anymore! This is very bad news for those who have been using them for such a long time! Radium bulbs were the best sellers for so many years! When used with the right ballast they produce one of the most spectacular and unique spectrum over any tank! One more way to regress in this hobby is to loose the opportunity of choice! The fact that many vendors have eliminated metal halide gear from their stock/website have contributed to a diminished number of lamps to be sold. Without gear new hobbyists naturally won't be able to try those lamps and with the number of hobbyists growing every day having to choose LEDs, the number of bulbs per percentage of sale will drop accordingly. A very nice market strategy to get rid of the metal halides as a whole. The qualities of the lamp are still the best for many applications, but Radium claims there was a significant "drop in sales".

Europe is on the green kick. Low energy. Halides use more energy than LED. Europe is also cutting the fast scooters. Any scooter going up to 90 miles an hour or more, The 500's will no longer be offered. You will only be able to buy a 250 maybe a 300. Faster, more powerful bikes use more gas. The next push on bikes will be all electric. Getting a bulb even from the Chinese will soon be impossible. The world push is less energy.

 

[Troylee]

Europe is on the green kick. Low energy. Halides use more energy than LED. Europe is also cutting the fast scooters. Any scooter going up to 90 miles an hour or more, The 500's will no longer be offered. You will only be able to buy a 250 maybe a 300. Faster, more powerful bikes use more gas. The next push on bikes will be all electric. Getting a bulb even from the Chinese will soon be impossible. The world push is less energy.

But specialty lighting like reef tanks the leds draw as much as a mh on the higher end fixtures.. xr30 is almost equivalent of a 250w mh… to bad it’s not a big enough market

 

[SpSDrew]

But specialty lighting like reef tanks the leds draw as much as a mh on the higher end fixtures.. xr30 is almost equivalent of a 250w mh… to bad it’s not a big enough market

This argument always puzzled me as well. Honestly I believe my halides save me money. My heaters turn off for well over 6 hours a day while the halides are on. I am using the same wattage as I would using reefbreeders or radions, and I am saving 6 hours of 600watts of heaters running. My tank never goes above 79 degrees even with the room set to 74 degrees and halides running.

I may have a different position if I had an enclosed canopy.

 

[MinnieMouse2]

I am not doubting this, but we have heard these things before. Phoenix stopped making bulbs... and they make them again. UVL was supposed to stop making VHO bulbs more than a decade ago and they still make them. So far, everything that we have seen are companies going out of business or retiring, which are legit reasons to stop making things. This seems like it will settle out with both Ushio and Radium supposedly calling it quits - seems like somebody will want the other's market share... or there is a miscommunication or something.

I guess that Giesemann can pick up this slack, if nothing else.

I think this time this is it for halides as Europe is pushing for less energy using items. Europe has a poor energy system to begin with. They have a dream of electric cars, scooters, and everything else. The grid systems around the world will not handle everyone boosted into it. They still need fossil fuels to run the grid. Even in the US our grid is not going to take everyone driving an electric car. That is the secret they are not telling anyone or that the system has to use fossil fuels or nuclear power plants to drive what energy we could produce. Energy is not finite. Can you say rolling power outages. I picture nations having to shut off power for 4 to 6 hours a day just to meet demand.

 

[Troylee]

This argument always puzzled me as well. Honestly I believe my halides save me money. My heaters turn off for well over 6 hours a day while the halides are on. I am using the same wattage as I would using reefbreeders or radions, and I am saving 6 hours of 600watts of heaters running. My tank never goes above 79 degrees even with the room set to 74 degrees and halides running.

I may have a different position if I had an enclosed canopy.

Same here… I’m in Vegas so I don’t use heaters period.. my house is set at 74 and my tank runs 76 at night and gets up to 79 with the halides and radions on..

 

[jda]

Had a chat late last night with a semi-friend overseas. He said that the market is currently changing, but not going away... and it started a while ago with some stock dwindling of known companies. He put the annual bulb demand well over 100k in total. There was a rise in 2018 to now in both planted and reef tank demand, but still not what it was before T5 - we knew there was a rise about then from several different manufacturers. T5 cut MH use more than LED did. Their company will still make bulbs as long as public aquariums and researchers still want to use them, and this is a big enough market - some of the research institutions buy hundreds a year and change them at the moment that output or spectrum shift just a little bit which is sometimes a month or two. Some of these places tried LED, but could not use the "but" in the typical reason of "MH was the best light that I ever used, but..." and they need the optimum performance. These research institutions exist all over the world where there are oceans.

He did confirm that NOBODY has banned or limited hobby and specialty type bulbs. It takes special people, who are smart, to exempt total parts of a market in legislation. In our cases, these will be people who are researchers with pHd, etc. who wold likely testify the LED cannot do the same thing and also that there are no real power savings. The regulators won't look to math-lacking hobbyists or stupid manufacturers claims. With power not being an issue, then it is down to hazardous materials and a single thermostat contains between 2.5 and 4 grams of mercury and a MODERN MH bulbs is between 10 and 50mg.

This is me talking now, but the argument for everybody just to get a whole pile of 400w halides and 4x T5s has been gone for a long time. LED did help with this - it made people do math. Most people could use 150w halides and on a tank like a 75, 90 or 120 gallon, those 300 watts are less, or no more, than what people use with their panels or T5s... and save some heater costs since 150w Halides don't really heat the tank up all that much.

 

[alton]

For years the government has passed energy laws stopping the use or design of using certain lamps or bulbs. T12’s where first on the list with incandescent close behind. Specialty lamps where excluded. Yesterday I went into Home Depot and all said lamps where on their shelves, including compact fluorescent. Which I am not sure why anyone still uses those? The only agency that is followed is the IECC (International Energy Conservation Code). Once a city adopts the latest code it gets expensive for owners. Since February the City of San Antonio now enforces the 2021 code. Buildings must now use much less wattage per square foot. When you leave a room, not only will lights turn off but also 50% of the receptacles in most buildings. Parking lot pole lights must have motion sensors on each pole. So as you walk through the parking lot the lights will brighten and then dim back down. As an owner you must have minimum one car charging unit which will probably be a level two which only employee’s will use since no one wants to wait hours to recharge their car. Yea I miss MH, do not miss the size of reflector. During the summer they only ran 4 hours with a couple of Build my Leds running 8 hours, my coral growth never slowed. During the winter MH ran 8 and I never ran a heater. When I changed to LED's 100% I waited for the savings on my electric, but it never happened. It seems the clothes dryer, water for kids to take shower used so much more.

 

[Mickey]

I assume that most of you are using the mogul base bulbs. I've used 250W double ended bulbs for close to 20 years and this is the first year I had lots of trouble getting my replacements. Even ReefBrite confirmed to me that they would not be getting any more of the DE bulbs, though they did have plenty of the mogul based ones.

I still use my original PFO DE fixtures and ballasts. But if I can no longer get replacement bulbs I'll be switching to LED's in the future rather than risking buying new mogul based fixtures then have those bulbs become unavailable some years down the road.

 

[BeanAnimal]

When I changed to LED's 100% I waited for the savings on my electric, but it never happened. It seems the clothes dryer, water for kids to take shower used so much more.

MH produce a lot of IR radiation that heats the water directly. LEDs do not. However, LEDs are more limited in other spectra as well. In the end, most of end up replacing MH with LED at close to a Watt for Watt trade. The LEDs appear to need a bit higher output par wise, to accomplish what MH did. So we may heat the water less directly, but we are still using roughly the same amount of energy.

I had two 150 DE halides
I now have two 140W Mitras and those replaced 3x Radions that ran at ~100w each.

The LEDs run for 12 hours ramped up/down
The MHs ran for ~8.5 hours full intensity

 

[jmichaelh7]

Has anyone ever tried the $20 Marine color bulbs from Ebay? Debating ordering one to compare par/spectrum.

That will be something interesting to share

 

[JCOLE]

Since I have an investment in Halide with 5 years of 400w Radiums stocked up. What is the maximum length I could run a bulb before changing. I realize there will be a spectrum shift, etc but if I cannot get these bulbs anymore, I want to use them as long as I can.

 

[djf91]

Since I have an investment in Halide with 5 years of 400w Radiums stocked up. What is the maximum length I could run a bulb before changing. I realize there will be a spectrum shift, etc but if I cannot get these bulbs anymore, I want to use them as long as I can.

How many hours per day are you running these? What ballasts are you using?

 

[oreo54]

Since I have an investment in Halide with 5 years of 400w Radiums stocked up. What is the maximum length I could run a bulb before changing. I realize there will be a spectrum shift, etc but if I cannot get these bulbs anymore, I want to use them as long as I can.

See " history" but note that there is no guarantee they are current " built" the exact same way or run the same

Aquarium Frontiers Feature

Figure 3 shows the spectral distribution of the various 20,000 K Osram/Radium lamps tested, and Table V presents the PPFD. Table VI presents the drop in PPFD output when compared to new lamps. Here again, one of the lamps at 6500 hours of life seems to be an outlier (an anomaly). As seen from the data, these lamps tend to lose their output at a much higher rate compared to the 6500 and 10,000 K lamps. Year-old lamps had lost about 40 to 50 percent of their intensity. Unlike most of the other lamps, these lamps show an almost uniform reduction in intensity across the range.

 

[areefer01]

Same here… I’m in Vegas so I don’t use heaters period.. my house is set at 74 and my tank runs 76 at night and gets up to 79 with the halides and radions on..

You lads may be getting the A's here shortly. Of course this is a 100% unrelated topic post but figured it wouldn't hurt