Arcadia 24 watt D3+UV flood compact
 

http://www.reptiles.swelluk.com/rept...od-375071.html


I've found this to be a good product. It's small for the amount of uvb it produces and is also a good price and replacement lamps for the unit can sometimes be had for £20 from Swells.

With a long T5 D3+12% tube we need a lump of a power supply, but somehow this is made tiny for the compact job. So the whole thing is light and simple to deal with.

What I found though is that the life of the lamp is much less than it is for the T5 D3 12% tube. This surprised me because I thought the tube was basically a bent T5, making it compact instead of linear. I haven't got any organised data but feel on solid ground as I've replaced 3 of these compact uv sources in recent months after finding that the uvb had dropped off quickly.

The linear T5 on the other hand seems to blast out uvb endlessly. Maybe the technology didn't transfer quite so well to the compact design.

It's still a good product, just needs a new tube more often than I expected.

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback!

The lamp is guaranteed to be upper index potent for 12 whole months.

Please change then

John

I have this lamp and really like it. I have no way of measuring how much uv it is actually puting out though. How long roughly are you getting to a bulb?

Hi. Because I've bought 3 of them at different times and used them for different amounts of hours I can't really say. I'm not good at keeping track and as I've got a few of these on the go and some T5 D3 tubes as well it's worth it for me to have a uvb meter but for a lot of keepers it wouldn't be.

John says that this lamp is good for a year and I don't doubt that. It's just that the T5 D3 long tubes last for such a very long time. When their output dropped off a bit I was able to lower them and get many months more use out of them. I have also done that with the compact flood lamp but that is maybe not advisable without a meter.

I found these to be good when put next to an ordinary Halogen basking lamp.

I heard there is a new 54w Flood lamp, if that is correct I'm sure this would be a great lamp to have. It will be interesting to see if anyone has one, and what they think of it?

I can confirm that there is indeed a 55watt version available now.

John it says on the Swells site that the 55 watt flood has all the advantages of the 24 watt version but also produces heat and better uv penetration. Can you tell us if thats accurate? Heat? Looks like a similar tube to the 24 watt.

Hi,

It is a longer more powerful version of the 24w. It's not a heat lamp at all.

But it is a full spectrum plus UVB high output T5 reptile system.

John

Thanks for clarifying that John. I have ordered one and will post something once it's up and running.

The 55 watt version has arrived and guess what? It's like the 24 watt only bigger!

From what I can see it covers a larger area and obviously it's brighter and has more uvb output.

I hope to set it up tomorrow and give it a try.