UVB Meter Owners, Thread Excerpt
Yes the Megaray Metal Halide is very close to the EB mercury vapor
but its 70 watts insted of 60 and Bobmac sent me one a little while
back to try out with my iguanas and to use in the up coming megaray
and new lighting videos for reptileuv.com i'm working on.
This light looks the same untill you plug it in and WOW its the purest bright white light i have ever seen! years ago when i went from the old reptisun 5.0 to the megaray MV it was a huge difference in brightness, then a while ago when i learned how to add in the combo lighting again the brightness took me a couple days to get used to it but the iguanas loved it.
Now i plug this light in and again i'm amazed at just how bright this light is it completely matches the light coming in from the open window during full sun and yet when i put my hand under it theres no artifical color spikes and my skin looks completely natural.
At first i set it up without my iguana so i could play with it and test it many times over afew hours to see what all was happening as i wasn't ready for what i saw. lol When i went from the old 5.0 i went from under 700 lux to maybe 12,000 lux with just the megaray then later 20,000 lux with the combo lighting and now with just this one light i'm up to where the sun is on my lux meter taking a reading outside in full sun in the afternoon! i couldnt beleive it! over 70,000 lux at 12 inches and i had to tell Bobmac the other day, that if this wasn't a megaray light and i didn't have a uvb meter and lux meter i would have been alittle worried to use it but thats what i so love about his lights they are nothing but quality! and even with my meters i still wasn't 100% sure cause i dont have a UVI 6.5 meter yet but after checking reptileuv and seeing the UVI chart Frances made i felt better that i was setting it up right.
I did have to set it alittle higher then the 2 or 3 month old SB 100 watt megaray i had just bought because this MH has alittle more UVB then the MV i was using in that spot and Bob had sent me a matching 50 watt halogen to use for the basking heat but it also adds alittle more lux, more colors and i'm still using my double 48 inch fluorescent 5000 K fixture so as my iguana moves to the other end of the 4 foot by 4 foot window he will still have close to 2000 lux and more of the blue-green down that end to work like shade so he can regulate how much lux, uvb and heat he wants. Also because i use 20 inch wide 9 foot long white closet organizer shelves i made the MH uvb "hot spot" point to the one side of the shelf closer to the window and the halogen point to the other side of the shelf away from the window so he can lay on one side to get full uvb or the other to get more heat and less uvb or he can lay sideways with his face at the screen in the window and be under both and get uvb closer to his 3rd eye while his hip and base of the tail will get full heat.
The 50 watt halogen had to be maybe 2 inches higher then the MH but on a cool day in the high 70s low 80s the halogen needs to come down about 2 inches to give him the same basking temp and body heat with the window open.
I read somewhere Bobmac was saying making the high quality uvb lights is more of an art form and i have to say he is a great artist then cause my iguana Binty LOVES this thing and he doesn't want to share it with my two rescued igs at all! lol but they have seen it walking past his room and this light is like a reptile magnet they all want to be under it. When given the choice after a bath in the tub to either go in their room and window with the megaray MV and combo lighting or the megaray MH all 3 have picked the MH everytime.
Its so bad that when Binty gets to go outside Woody and Gizmo come in they argue over who gets to sit under it and Woody my big wild crazy male rescue is such a push over cause he always let Gizmo have the best spot and he spends an hour trying to slowly sneak up closer and closer cause shes a dominant girl and has no problem bitting him if he gets to close and his mouth is 3 times hers but he likes her to much to bite her back and if he sits still she likes to sit on him. I have found Binty likes it when the halogen and fluorescent come on first then later the MH comes on but i have to turn the MH off about an hour before dark for him to understand its getting dark out because at first he would stay up as long as the MH was on so at 10pm hes still basking away which is very unusual for Binty he likes to be in his sleeping spot before dark but by turning off the MH and leaving on the other 2 types of lights on he seems to realize "the sun is going down" and starts looking for where he wants to sleep that night as he is a free roamer.
After learning so much more about lighting in the last year, (Thanks to Bobmac, Frances, Henry and many others here) then i knew in the last 17 years of owning and then later rescuing iguanas i can see how the QUALITY of light is the REAL KEY to keeping them healthy and happy in more ways then we ever knew before and now knowing how the 3rd eye, lux levels, uvb levels all work to super charge their immune system i will be switching over from the Megaray MV to the Megaray MH when it comes out for sale for all 3 of mine and i'm guessing it will be just alittle more then the megaray EB MV, i can say it will be the best money i ever spent.
Bobmac told me this light used to be Lucky Lizards light one of his loved rescued iguanas so its been used for a good while but i couldn't tell that it wasn't brand new, the lux level is many times higher and the uvb was higher then my new SB 100 watt MV. The light slowly turns on like the all EB megarays i have noticed it flashes as it heats up again like the others but its a very bright flash with reddish white look to it and its only a split second a couple times as it reaches full intensity but then its a steady white light. This is not a production model so the uvb was set at the level Bobmac needed and ofcourse as i said i had to high it alttle higher then the megaray it replaced but now we'll wait to see the real report from Frances on this light and i'll post any changes i see in reading on this one, i guess i need to ask Bobmac the age and what the lux and uvb started at to see how the decay rate is for this one.
This really is taking reptile lighting to the next level.
Jimmy
This light looks the same untill you plug it in and WOW its the purest bright white light i have ever seen! years ago when i went from the old reptisun 5.0 to the megaray MV it was a huge difference in brightness, then a while ago when i learned how to add in the combo lighting again the brightness took me a couple days to get used to it but the iguanas loved it.
Now i plug this light in and again i'm amazed at just how bright this light is it completely matches the light coming in from the open window during full sun and yet when i put my hand under it theres no artifical color spikes and my skin looks completely natural.
At first i set it up without my iguana so i could play with it and test it many times over afew hours to see what all was happening as i wasn't ready for what i saw. lol When i went from the old 5.0 i went from under 700 lux to maybe 12,000 lux with just the megaray then later 20,000 lux with the combo lighting and now with just this one light i'm up to where the sun is on my lux meter taking a reading outside in full sun in the afternoon! i couldnt beleive it! over 70,000 lux at 12 inches and i had to tell Bobmac the other day, that if this wasn't a megaray light and i didn't have a uvb meter and lux meter i would have been alittle worried to use it but thats what i so love about his lights they are nothing but quality! and even with my meters i still wasn't 100% sure cause i dont have a UVI 6.5 meter yet but after checking reptileuv and seeing the UVI chart Frances made i felt better that i was setting it up right.
I did have to set it alittle higher then the 2 or 3 month old SB 100 watt megaray i had just bought because this MH has alittle more UVB then the MV i was using in that spot and Bob had sent me a matching 50 watt halogen to use for the basking heat but it also adds alittle more lux, more colors and i'm still using my double 48 inch fluorescent 5000 K fixture so as my iguana moves to the other end of the 4 foot by 4 foot window he will still have close to 2000 lux and more of the blue-green down that end to work like shade so he can regulate how much lux, uvb and heat he wants. Also because i use 20 inch wide 9 foot long white closet organizer shelves i made the MH uvb "hot spot" point to the one side of the shelf closer to the window and the halogen point to the other side of the shelf away from the window so he can lay on one side to get full uvb or the other to get more heat and less uvb or he can lay sideways with his face at the screen in the window and be under both and get uvb closer to his 3rd eye while his hip and base of the tail will get full heat.
The 50 watt halogen had to be maybe 2 inches higher then the MH but on a cool day in the high 70s low 80s the halogen needs to come down about 2 inches to give him the same basking temp and body heat with the window open.
I read somewhere Bobmac was saying making the high quality uvb lights is more of an art form and i have to say he is a great artist then cause my iguana Binty LOVES this thing and he doesn't want to share it with my two rescued igs at all! lol but they have seen it walking past his room and this light is like a reptile magnet they all want to be under it. When given the choice after a bath in the tub to either go in their room and window with the megaray MV and combo lighting or the megaray MH all 3 have picked the MH everytime.
Its so bad that when Binty gets to go outside Woody and Gizmo come in they argue over who gets to sit under it and Woody my big wild crazy male rescue is such a push over cause he always let Gizmo have the best spot and he spends an hour trying to slowly sneak up closer and closer cause shes a dominant girl and has no problem bitting him if he gets to close and his mouth is 3 times hers but he likes her to much to bite her back and if he sits still she likes to sit on him. I have found Binty likes it when the halogen and fluorescent come on first then later the MH comes on but i have to turn the MH off about an hour before dark for him to understand its getting dark out because at first he would stay up as long as the MH was on so at 10pm hes still basking away which is very unusual for Binty he likes to be in his sleeping spot before dark but by turning off the MH and leaving on the other 2 types of lights on he seems to realize "the sun is going down" and starts looking for where he wants to sleep that night as he is a free roamer.
After learning so much more about lighting in the last year, (Thanks to Bobmac, Frances, Henry and many others here) then i knew in the last 17 years of owning and then later rescuing iguanas i can see how the QUALITY of light is the REAL KEY to keeping them healthy and happy in more ways then we ever knew before and now knowing how the 3rd eye, lux levels, uvb levels all work to super charge their immune system i will be switching over from the Megaray MV to the Megaray MH when it comes out for sale for all 3 of mine and i'm guessing it will be just alittle more then the megaray EB MV, i can say it will be the best money i ever spent.
Bobmac told me this light used to be Lucky Lizards light one of his loved rescued iguanas so its been used for a good while but i couldn't tell that it wasn't brand new, the lux level is many times higher and the uvb was higher then my new SB 100 watt MV. The light slowly turns on like the all EB megarays i have noticed it flashes as it heats up again like the others but its a very bright flash with reddish white look to it and its only a split second a couple times as it reaches full intensity but then its a steady white light. This is not a production model so the uvb was set at the level Bobmac needed and ofcourse as i said i had to high it alttle higher then the megaray it replaced but now we'll wait to see the real report from Frances on this light and i'll post any changes i see in reading on this one, i guess i need to ask Bobmac the age and what the lux and uvb started at to see how the decay rate is for this one.
This really is taking reptile lighting to the next level.
Jimmy
