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Dr Jonathon Howard aka the Australian ‘Beardie Vet’ will be speaking at the Drayton Manor Park conference in March 2022!:blob8: Jonathon is an Australian exotics and wildlife veterinarian studying bearded dragons (Pogona vitticeps) in the wild. Graduating from the University of Sydney in 2010...

Hi, Brandon. I may be mis-interpreting Mr. Spectrum's test method but what I think he has done is to measure the readings taken from the sides of the basking platform, i.e., his meter is positioned at an angle, pointing towards the fixture diagonally, and the "middle of the bulb" readings are...

Hi, Mr. Spectrum. No-one has mentioned that flipping the reflector has caused it to break. That's really bad. Thanks for adding the warning. But from your results, you've confirmed that the issue is that these reflectors have been assembled with the reflectors back-to-front in their holders...

Brandon, are you using different ballast (base) fixtures as well, or are your readings from two reflectors clipped onto the same ballast (base)? Just trying to find any other reason for this difference ... I gotta go, it's 1:30am here, but... my maths is not very good this late. What percentage...

Oh dear... If this doesn't work, we're back to the drawing board... Several people have turned "good" reflectors round and turned them into "useless" ones... but not yet tried to repair ones that were found to be bad..

:blob5: Brandon, our Reptile Lighting Facebook group has been working hard on this and we have FOUND THE ANSWER!!! A whole batch of Sunblaster reflectors have simply had their Aluminized Mylar reflectors slipped into the black holder BACK TO FRONT!! They can be fixed in a few seconds. Let me...

I agree with CooperDragon; those are good results and that is plenty of UVB. Personally I don't aim for anything higher than UVI 3 - 4 in my dragon's basking zone. The slow decay will get even slower over time. If this tube was being used long-term, it would be interesting to know how its decay...

I'm afraid those "toy" meters are a complete waste of time, Aziara. They respond to UVA as well as UVB, so cannot tell you whether your tubes are stronger or weaker than they should be... even a weak tube will give a reading with either of these, and you won't even know whether it is weaker...

Those results are excellent.... a UVI of 3 at beardie level in the basking zone is plenty. Thank you so much... it's good to know the facts. So basically, with a good reflective fixture these ZooMed Reptisun 10.0 tubes with the gold caps are still perfectly fine for beardies, at very sensible...

That, Aziara, is the million-dollar question... To answer that, if you don't have a Solarmeter 6.5, and don't know anyone with one, or a store offering to test it for you.... first we need to know what is the typical output of one of these gold-ended tubes. So... What type (T8 or T5-HO) and...

Kingofnobbys, I appreciate what you are saying. There is however no point in re-labelling anything - the red and gold-capped tubes are no longer in production. It is also a sad truth that although many individual companies do keep a tight control (or at least, some control) on their quality -...

Akire and Cooperdragon, thank you for your input. Firstly, please be reassured - none of the ZooMed tubes, from older or newer batches, are "dodgy" as has been implied. They are perfectly good tubes. A few years ago we would all have got very excited over their high output; it's just that now...

Hi, KingofNobbys. Please read my post above; there was never a "bad batch", there was a different manufacturer. All the tubes from this manufacturer over the last year or so, at least, appear to have been manufactured with a phosphor or glass or both, which did not produce as much UVB as those...

Hi, guys. Someone directed me to this thread (as sadly, I can't monitor all the forums I belong to, as I used to do)... I'm very sad to hear that some people regard the Facebook Reptile Lighting Group as somehow "covert" and imply that things discussed there are being "kept from the public eye"...

Those interference filters are very nice (thanks for the link :) ) but they do not have sharp enough cut-off to eliminate (for example) a UVB response from a UVB+UVA broadband meter. For example, the specs for the CGA-320: "Cut-on Wavelength at 50% Absolute Transmittance 320 ± 5 nm Cut-on...

Hi, KingofNobbys. ( Hi, Taterbug ;) ) King of Nobbys, I'm afraid I have to contradict you here, because although you clearly have a detailed understanding of the way in which the UV Index was devised, using a spectrometer which of course responds to, and integrates the UVA + UVB +UVC, the...

Hi, BMiller. Yes, you're absolutely right! And you will be fascinated, as I was, to learn that the 6.4 and 6.5 meters have exactly the same sensors - they are "seeing" and measuring exactly the same part of the spectrum. If you take the reading from a 6.4 meter and multiply it by 0.14, you will...

Solarmeter 6.5 meters are now available again! A fault in a component led to recall of a batch manufactured between Sept 2015 and April 2016. The problem's been sorted. New meters are now on sale. New Solarmeter 6.5 meters will have serial numbers 03600 and above. If you're concerned that you...

Hi, guys. I have today received good news from Solarmeter. They have now received a new shipment of perfect filters and will be re-starting production of Solarmeter 6.5s and ZooMed UV Index Radiometers in the next few days. (And repairing and returning those that were in the affected batch...

I haven't heard of any problems with the 6.2 meter, Amyemiline. If you are happy with the brand of UVB lamp you are using, and know what distance you need it to be... i.e., you just want to monitor its decay, then a Solarmeter 6.2 is fine, and will do the job well. But if you want to compare...