I noticed this bulb on amazon at a great price that it appears people are buying to use as a uvb bulb, as that is what it's advertised as, but I don't see any mention of it being self ballasted, wouldn't it have to be in order to be a mercury bulb that produces uvb?
I'd steer clear. MVB and UVB lights tend to follow along the lines of you get what you pay for. The off brands are unknown as far as output (no test results to go from) and can suffer from quality control issues. Best to avoid them unless you have a Solarmeter to measure the output of the bulb to make sure it's doing what is expected. For an MVB, I'd stick with either an Arcadia or PowerSun.
This particular bulb is being sold by a few different sellers, none of them mention a ballast. 6 months ago the market was flooded with fake uvc led bulbs from overseas that people were using ineffectively to kill virus germs, that kind of thing really irks me. I'm thinking without a ballast this bulb is just an incandescent heat lamp being misrepresented which could lead to some sick beardies. I picked up a replacement solar glo at petsmart, they have the 125w for 30$. Thanks for the responses, no sense in trying to save 8 bucks. ^_^
Just make sure you have proper distance for your Solar Glo and you may want to add another UVB - some of the All in Ones do not put out enough UVB so you end up buying another one to make sure you have enough UVB --- personally I would go w/ a bright white basking bulb and a regular fixture w/reflector and the Reptisun 10.0 T 5 or the Arcaida 12% bulb
Karrie
Yea, thanks, I have the 22" t5 10.0 bulb that I just replaced as well, on the other side of the cage with a sunblaster housing. Our guy has been hanging out on that side much more now. So I put in the new solorglow murcury bulb in our zoo med deep dome with ceramic socket, and It's been in for a week, the last one we had was 80w, this is 125, the temp in the hotspot seems fine, still in range. The 125 bulb is humming/buzzing pretty loud, I have a generic chicken heating dome from depot I might try that to check if it's the zoo med dome but my guess is that it is the bulb. I'm not sure if this is normal, I'm wondering if that's why my beardie is hanging out on the other side of the tank. Sometimes crickets hide and make a lot of noise at night that doesn't seem to bother him, but this is constant, it's not shaking the tank or anything but it's like a little refrigerator running all day. I know a lot of places are pretty stubborn about taking back bulbs.
2nd biggest hint , no guidance on distance vs UVB and distance vs UVA and distance vs temperature or a flux map or the spectrum it is purported to produce .
It's rubbish.
Save a little more money to pay for an Arcadia or MegaRay or a Exo Terra or a Zoo Med MVB or a good t5ho 10 to 14% UVB tube and hood.