Source for Fade-in, fade-out light timer?

[sidech]

To be honest, I am not an expert on the physics part, but it has to do with the surface area and the phosphor coating of the tube that is lost when you have a CFL. I know all this because I invested a ton of money into CFLs by Avitech and Featherbrite and was very proud of myself and was posting about it on another forum a long while back when I was kindly told that they were a big useless waste of money. I was very dismayed and spoke to the manufacturers who assured me they were not. Went back to the forum, relayed the info, but was still told I was wrong and that if I didn't trust them then to talk to real lighting manufacturers, not ones that are trying to make money off of crazy bird owners (like myself). So that's what I did-- I called and researched a ton of lighting manufacturers who are in the business of making lights and not in the business of making money off of avian lighting and they all confirmed that there is no way a CFL could be useful as an avian lighting solution. After doing more and more research and speaking to various people in the business or long time bird owners... it keeps coming back to this. Which sucks, because I'd much prefer to use CFLs for aesthetic and practical reasons, but that's what I've found to be the plain old truth.

Lotus, I'm presently seeking to buy good avian lighting for my Eclectus. He needs sunlight but I can't give him any at the moment ; too cold outside. What EXACTLY should I buy ?

Thanks |!

[lotus15]

What I've found to be ideal are any fluorescent tubes that achieve a CRI of 93+ and a Kelvin rating of 5000-5,500. Both Phillips and Halco brand make tubes like this. You need an electronic (not a magnetic) ballast so that it does not flicker.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

OK, I'll do a little research here, but we are talking engineering, not physics. A CFL is just a tube bent into a U-shape, and some are quite a bit longer than the standard household bulb replacement CFLs, so I'm not convinced the lighting manufacturers are completely understanding what is on the market. Why would they? The proof should be in the spectrum. Let me see if I can find published spectra of the various items on the market.

FWIW the Kelvin rating is color temperature and tells you the bulb produces an overall shape to its spectrum similar to a blackbody at the rated temperature. The sun behaves like a blackbody at about 5700 K in terms of its visible light spectrum. The CRI rating tells you how close the bulb appears to a blackbody in terms of how a set of specific colors render under the lighting (100 is a perfect blackbody). Neither of these tells you anything about the non-visible spectrum of the bulb directly.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

FWIW, I have written both Zoo Med and Featherbrite to see if they can provide spectra for their full spectrum CFLs. Both companies state quite explicitly that the lights are designed to provide low levels of UVA and UVB. They do NOT claim that they provide the same fractional amount as the sun, just that there is a small amount of the total energy output in those wavelengths. I'll let you know what kind of response I get.

[lotus15]

Thanks entranced

This is going back a while now but I did know somebody through a forum who had Zoomed avian bulbs, Zoomed reptile bulbs, Featherbrites, and a Phillips fluorescent tube, and had a UV output tester thing (not very scientific, sorry, this is going off of hazy memory now and of course second hand info so take it with a grain of salt), but he said that the Zoomed avians and reptiles emitted the same amount of UV which alarmed me because I've read in several places and also been told by my avian vets NOT to use reptile bulbs because it's too much UV. Featherbrites emitted none and Phillips emitted some, although this went down a lot after a few months (which actually is in accordance with what most research says should happen... the tube itself will still produce light but the UV output rapidly degrades and probably will never last more than 6 months tops). It would be interesting (albeit pricey) if somebody were to reproduce this test.