# Upgrading a Coralife MH/Flourescent fixture



## DelawareJim (Nov 15, 2005)

I have a Coralife(ESU) metal halide/flourescent fixture over a 30" deep tank I want to upgrade. It's a stock 48" oak fan cooled unit I bought about 15 years ago. The oak fixture is 49-3/4" long x 10-1/2" wide x 7-1/2" high. The ballasts are 2 external "black boxes" in the cabinet underneath the tank. It has 2-175W mogul MH and 2-40W T-12 floursecent tubes and an aluminium reflector.

I want to upgrade to 2-250W moguls and 2-96W CF's.

I'm thinking I need a 250W MH ballast (preferrably electronic), a 96W CF ballast, and the CF fixtures. Mounting look fairly straight forward.

What do I need to get and how difficult should this be to do?

Cheers.
Jim


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## AaronT (Apr 26, 2004)

Do you have any pictures of the fixture?


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## DelawareJim (Nov 15, 2005)

I'll post some this week.

Cheers.
Jim


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## DelawareJim (Nov 15, 2005)

Bear with me. 

I'm having problems posting the pics to the web. I've never done this before and following Nate's instructions isn't working. For some reason, when I resize the pics to 800x600 it just crops them instead of compressing them.

Jim


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## DelawareJim (Nov 15, 2005)

Don't know if this will work.....









Cheers.
Jim


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## DelawareJim (Nov 15, 2005)

The image is in the photo gallery, key word "light fixture". Sorry for the image quality. Let me know if you need a better pic and I'll try again.

Cheers.
Jim


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## AaronT (Apr 26, 2004)

Jim. You may be able to fit a 2x96 watt AH supply PC kit in there on either side of the MH bulbs. You'd have to measure it to make sure. AH supply has the exact measurements of their reflectors on their site.

From what I understand you will also need a new MH ballast as you suspected. 

What are the dimensions of the tank? If the light fixture itself is only 10 1/2 inches wide and the tank is much wider you may be having light spread issues.


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## DelawareJim (Nov 15, 2005)

The tank is 48" long x 18" deep x 30" high (standard 110).

The MH part seems fairly straight forward. I'm thinking I just need to get 2 250 watt ballasts and use the existing mogul sockets for the new bulbs.

I might try that for starters and see how things go with that.

Cheers.
Jim


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## AaronT (Apr 26, 2004)

That sounds like a plan Jim. I have one of the retro kits from www.aquariumlight.com and I like it. You might ask if they'd give you a discount because you don't need the sockets: http://www.aquariumlight.com/product_info.php?dbid=373


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## gnatster (Mar 6, 2004)

> I'm thinking I need a 250W MH ballast (preferrably electronic), a 96W CF ballast, and the CF fixtures. Mounting look fairly straight forward.


Thats exactly what you need. Some caveats.

Check the bulb you have and the bulb you want to us at a place like Hellolights.com. They list the exact base type of all the bulbs they sell. If I remember there are two mogul bases sizes.

2x250W will put off more heat then 2x150. May want to look at fans.

As you are this deep into redoing the fixture you may want to look at replacing the refectors with MIRO 4 reflective material from AHsupply.com or another source.


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## DelawareJim (Nov 15, 2005)

Thanks Nate; didn't think about the reflector.

The fixture already has a 4.5" fan which I think should be sufficient for the bulb upgrade.

Cheers.
Jim


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