yellow XM

[Maxx]

Sue,
If your ballast worked before, and its not a bazillion years old...odss are its still working. I've heard of several bad batches of XM bulbs which look really yellow and unappealing. I would contact the vendor again and let them know this one is bad too....


Nick

 

[big t]

Thanks Chuck.

Sue that is pretty unfortunate, I was getting ready to order some new xm's but now I am having second thoughts. I ran into the same problem w/ my first set. Do you still have the old bulbs that you just replaced? Try putting one of them back in and see what color it is. Or take your white one from the other side and swap them to see if that makes any difference. That will rule out your ballast as being bad. HTH

 

[mojoreef]

YOu know Sue thiers not alot of difference between a ushio and a xm with ppfd. Maybe its time to go with a better manufacturer


Mike

 

[SueT]

Nick, I think it's working properly as it was when I first took the year old bulbs off and put the new ones in. It is just very strange to me that this one "right" side keeps going out. I put my last replacement bulb in last night for fire up this morning.

So after coming on at 8am, this side fired up to the beautiful blue-white crisp color to now an hour + later seems to becoming more dim.

I'm about to give up...

 

[Ed Hahn]

I ordered two 250 watt XM 10K bulbs. I will run one with a PFO HQI ballast. I will run the other with a Hamilton ballast. I know there will be a difference in bulbs due to different ballast. I talked to Joe at Inreef, I ordered from him. Joe seems to favor the 250 watt 10k XM. He has been selling them for years. He said he has had very few of them returned. I talked to him for quite a while. I do want to learn how to point the nipple of bulbs to cover my bases. I am hoping if I have any trouble I can return the bulbs also. Sue, I appreciate your time and feed back on this issue.
Sincerely,
Ed

 

[Maxx]

Ed,
According to the 250 watt SE bulb ballast comparison at RC, you want to :

Try to screw it in so that the nipple on the bulb is somewhere between 9 & 3 o'clock. This allows for vaporization of the "metal" in the MH bulb. When the nipple is at a lower position it leads to weird color shifts in the bulb.
HTH,

Nick

 

[SueT]

Hey Thanks ya'll for all the info. I did my own little experiement this morning after talking with Hellolights and a local guy thats helped me a lot.

I have 2 dual pfo ballasts and a single. One dual is over my 120g and the other dual and single is over my 180g. I took one of the yellow bulbs and turned the single ballst off. I took out an atleast 18+ month old iwasaki and put in a new XM and you would not believe how much more yellow the XM is. I swear I could not believe. So I turned it off and tried another of the new, bad XM's and every one was more yellow in the ballast than the old iwasaki's.

I now truly believe that it is the bulb{s} and not my ballast.

Mike, I liked these XM's due to my being able to run them with no actinics. They were that nice and I loved the color my corals had. I have heard some bad things about ushios and their color. I have never had lighting problems before but I can truly say I am lost about what to do besides getting something to replace this right side of my tank. My corals are not happy and I fear what may happen next.

 

[Ed Hahn]

Ed,
According to the 250 watt SE bulb ballast comparison at RC, you want to :

Try to screw it in so that the nipple on the bulb is somewhere between 9 & 3 o'clock. This allows for vaporization of the "metal" in the MH bulb. When the nipple is at a lower position it leads to weird color shifts in the bulb.
HTH,

Nick

thank you Nick,
Yes it does very much..

 

[Maxx]

Your welcome Ed...Glad my collection of Bizarre link sof obscure information is beginning to be useful...



NIck

 

[BlennyBabe]

I had to send 4 bulbs back before I had one that stayed white for more than two weeks. Thankfully, the suppliers know about this problem and are very understanding about replacing them.

 

[mojoreef]

Sue do you want me to overnight an ushio to use until you get this sorted out??


Mike

 

[dgasmd]

I wasn't going to say anything given that someone earlier already put a link to my thread, but here it goes.

I bought the XM to try because I had seen the 250 watt version on someone's tank and it looked great. Also read JB NY's study and had read Sanjay's studies too. I was running Ushios at the time, which should be the gold standard of 10,000K bulbs. The XM looked nice, but I was always very hesitant because I had read some many peple having problems with them. Manufacturer said they fixed the problem and yet you see tons of people with the same issues over and over. I did not want to deal with the inconsistancies, so I got rid of mine. If I was to go with 10,000K bulbs again, I have no doub whatsoever I would go with Ushios. Have to supplement though.

People in the hobby need to start questioning a lot of things we take as unwritten rules. Lots of unproven things we do and fight for. However, we know very little about them. I have to ask why is it that people running 175 watt bulbs get good coral growth (faster than in the ocean with sunlight). Why people running 20,000K bulbs get great colors and moderate growth (still faster than the ocean). Why people with extremely good skimmers and with no skimmers get better growth than in the ocean. What do the skimmers really take out. Does anybody have even a remote clue? A lot of these questions ahve no scientificly proven answers, but they have been answered with logic and what common sense would dictate: more light is better, more expensive skimmers are better, 6500K bulbs are best, etc. Well, sre they??

I chose to go with what people call not the best bulb with crappy PAR (radiums 400 watt) and yet I am getting good growth and awesome colors. Go figure. :lol: :lol:

 

[mojoreef]

Alberto those are great questions and would make a facinating thread. Why dont you start one in the advanced topics forum, I think you would be surprised at how many can be answered with scientific back up. I think it might also help answer alot of questions for folks.

MIke

 

[dgasmd]

Mike:

What science dictates as normal in the ocean may or may not apply at all in a contained glass box LOL....................

 

[Scooterman]

If your getting good growth, why even question your techniques, isn't that your soul purpose of having a reef in the first place? I agree, this would make a deep subject. I've been using the BL 10,000k after looking at all of the pretty pictures posted in the comparison threads over at RC & reading of the XM yellowing problems all over, seem to be a random thing. I must say it lights yellow for a few minutes & then kicks in to a beautiful color afterwards been consistant so far. I don't need the VHO's but I have them so I use them also, eventually I'll probably go strictly MH when I get enough Dough to replace the fluorescents.

 

[dgasmd]

Here you go by popular demand:
http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=64042#post64042

SueT:

I apologize for derailing your thread. Now back to our scheduled programing.

 

[SueT]

No, Alberto, I'm glad you jumped in here regarding this issue. I seem to have fixed mine for today atleast.

Mike, Thank you for that offer to send me that light. I appreciate the kindness.

One of the 3 yellow XM's I tried out on a single ballast I have over the 180g and over the course of yesterday seemed to be becoming brighter. As of last night I again switched out the last yellow replacement and put the 2nd brightening XM back in and as of this morning, the bulb has been running as beautiful white/blue all day. I seem to have a reef tank with the same color bulbs over it again. I am only hoping and praying it stays like this.

I find it so strange that this bulb burned in and lasted for 3.5 days before it went yellow. Trying it out on another ballast for 1 day it came back to the white color and it's now back on the right side and keeping the beautiful color. We'll see about tomorrow, but I'm keepin' the faith. Now when it comes time to change lights out next year I will definitely think twice about what to go to. This was way to stressful of me. :badgrin:

 

[cheeks69]

Hi Sue how have things turned out with the XM's ?
I received my XM 10k 250w SE bulb and it's really yellow :exclaim:
I contacted Jason at XM lighting but it hasn't been resolved yet although my corals are responding well to it, much better then the Coralvue's it's still too yellow for me

 

[mattseattle]

my XM 10k's after about 2.5 months of use turned yellow. I contacted Jason and finally after 2 weeks of emails back and forth he told me to send them back so he could verify they were in fact yellow and it wasn't my eyes playing tricks on me. Here is his exact quote as I thought it was funny "Sometimes you get used to the color and it appears to be not as “white” as before. Your eyes plays tricks on you."

I find that rather funny. So I mailed my 2 bulbs to him so he could 'verify' that in fact my eyes were not playing tricks on me. I will see if I get replacements or the same bulbs back. I don't think I'll be buying XM bulbs again.

 

[SueT]

Hi Robert, my lights are finally equal and are the bright white. It took them Hellolights, shipping me 3 bulbs but I finally got one that worked although the one that has worked was a yellow bulb but it was the one of 3 that stayed white the longest.

My corals and clams did not like that yellow lighting. I hope you get it fixed to your satisfaction. Whoever you got the light from should replace it for sure. It seems to be from what I have found out a production problem is that these XM's are now made in mass production in china. That is what I was told by someone locally that knows....

Matt, your eyes are playing tricks on you??? Now that is a new one I had not heard before. How funny... Hellolights never questioned me and sent mine out albeit by wagon train as soon as I called. They were very good about doing it, maybe they knew how many were coming back to them.