2010 Situation with mercury vapor bulb UVB lights!!!

[Chuey]

Hi Folks,
I've been reading alot about people's concerns with their light fixtures.

I personally feel your pain as Ash who is on this board and myself went out and bought a $190 UVB meter to test all of our Mercury Vapor bulbs.

Using our particular meter a normal reading for a very good mercury vapor bulbs is 80-150nm. This is benchmarking a high Australian noon soon putting an output out at around 350-450nm. Most sun loving animals will seek shade in a noon sun.

Anyway we've discovered that nearly all the manufacuctes of of Merc Vap bulbs have had manufucturing issues this year. We have been getting readings of 40 or less on brand new bulbs. We've spent well over a 100 dollars in trying out new bulbs.

For right now the ONLY brand that has a decent output is flukers, which is putting out about 110nm. We've had one for about 3 months now with no degradation whatsoever. I've spoken with some of the manufacturers myself. Depending on when the bulbs of the other brands were made you will or will not have a problem. Some folks bulbs that were purchased in 2009 were fine. Whereas the 2010 bulbs have been busts.

I just thought you should know. If you go to this forum, under the site policies threads, you will see a post about UVB lighting, its lengthy and details everything. For right now I can only recommend Flukers as being legit out of the mercury bulbs. Compacts floure suck and the tubes are only ok. Hope this helps everyone!
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.beardeddragon.org/bjive/index.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.beardeddragon.org/bjive/index.php</a><!-- m -->

 

[slideaboot]

Great info! Thanks.

 

[Chuey]

No problem one of the persons on that thread is an independent tester for the manufacturers she's very knowledgable. Anyhoo the thread is absolutely comprehensive about what's going on right now including Ashes results in testing our own lights. Age of light, burn in times etc...etc.. are all provided.

Its scary though some of the UVB failures were totally failures producing literally zero levels of UVB. So you would feel the heat output and would be convinced that it was producing UVB even though it wasn't. The only way of telling is with a proper UVB meter which are pricey.

 

[chelvis]

wow glad i stocked up plast year. So 2009 bulbs are fine including powersun right? I really got to invest in one of those UV meters.

 

[preston897]

yea i actually waited 6 months for a mega ray then i finally got my money back. so i just went and picked up a sun glo. i figured what could it hurt to try. i have 2 4 ft. reptisun 5.0 in the enclosure so if the UVB is low its not a big worry. but next its a powersun. i am going to look into the flukers though! i always wondered how those were

 

[Chuey]

You have to read the thread that I linked. Its comprehensive.

Anyhoo the people on the bearded dragon forum are as pyschotically (real word? lmao) dedicated to their reps as the Tegu Talk folks.

With that said i mean to take the research with a grain of salt. Since bearded dragons are from Australia they use the equivalent of a noon high sun as the measure of max UVB on their scale. Beards will bask a bit but then hide in those intensities of 350(micro watt symbol) to 450.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.uvguide.co.uk/uvinnature.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.uvguide.co.uk/uvinnature.htm</a><!-- m -->

So even though a tube light for example is putting out only 50nm of UVB is ok since we on average give our animals 12 hours of this. I think people are just upset that the output of the mercury vapor bulbs are not putting out what they claim to put out. I.E. why buy a mvb that puts out the same output as a 10.0 tube flourescant bulb.