Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I purchased a couple of these bulbs new bulbs from Menard's. The manufacturer is Feit Electric. They're billed as being daylight spectrum and unlike other bulbs [ie. Phillips daylight compact fluorescent], they are truly about as close a match to daylight as you can get. The really cool thing about these bulbs is their incredible intensity. The 100 watt goes for about $7.00 and puts out an incredible amount of light for a mere 23 watts energy usage. To get really specific about these bulbs, their color temperature is 6000k which is really good - ANSI standards for daylight spectrum bulbs is 6500k. Also they put out 1500 lumens which is also pretty good considering your average incandescent is pretty low. I don't know the CRI [color rendering index] for this bulb, but all full spectrum daylight bulbs are above 90 CRI so I know with the color temp being as high as it is the CRI must be pretty high as well. Anyway, I wanted to be able to convey the difference between a standard compact fluorescent [most are warm white], and this particular bulb and the resulting better lighting for seeing true colors in your animals and stimulating plant growth in the vivarium. So without further ado...

Feit Electric daylight compact fluorescents

Warm white compact fluorescent

Feit Electric Daylight compact fluorescent

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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

Matt, That looks like a significant difference. Thanks.

We don't have Menard's here in the Northeast. Is there another way to purchase these?
That price sure beats the price the pet shops are charging.

>>We don't have Menard's here in the Northeast. Is there another way to purchase these?
>>That price sure beats the price the pet shops are charging.

Keep in mind these are NOT UVB producing bulbs, simply fluorescents that put out a light that is very close to daylight in terms of color temperature and CRI. I think I tried looking for some sites that sold them and had trouble finding them. However, a second search turned up this site:
Link

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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

I emailed Feit asking about the CRI [color rendering index] for their daylight compact fluorescents. It turns out they have a CRI of 81. Not too bad in terms of how accurately they render true color as seen in daylight. Bulbs with a CRI between 80 and 100 [CRI of 100 is considered high-noon daylight], are the best in terms of how accurately the light they give off renders true colors. However, there are some issues with CRI and color temperature. Some bulbs may have a much higher CRI but very low color temperature, meaning they show colors fairly true to life, yet tend to be much more dim/low intensity. The key is finding a bulb that both has high intensity color temperature[above 6500k is considered daylight by ANSI standards]and a high CRI. I wish the Feit bulb had a higher CRI but given its stellar color temp of 6000k and a fairly good CRI, it's currently one of the best bulbs I've seen. There are some other compact fluorescents out there that have higher CRI coupled with high color temp but at that point you're talking about the difference between a $7 bulb and a $20 bulb.
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Matt Campbell
25 years herp keeping experience
Full-time zookeeper
Personal collection - 21 snakes (9 genera), 20 lizards (4 genera), 6 chelonians (2 genera)

np

The full spectrum can't be beat in my HO. Worth the $18-20 costs. All my rooms have the full spectrum.

Mike