MV lights?

[Rev. Redmond Farrier]

I am new at insect collecting and on a VERY limited budget. I have noticed a lot of talk about mercury vapor lighting. A Google search for Mercury Vapor Fixtures turned up nothing but bulbs and a couple of street lamp heads.

So what do I need to know about MV lights? Can I throw together an MV set up really cheap or would I have to dish out the big bucks for a premade set up? Is it just about the intensity of the light or is it something about the light from an MV bulb? If it is just the intensity of the light, would a regular halogen work light work until I can do better?

I would also like to know about blacklights. Would a simple blacklight like those found in the party supply section of a store suffice for the time being, or do I need a special type of blacklight?

I realize that I have a lot of questions, but I am new and came here to learn. ;D

[admin]

You can research what's available on www.bioquip.com & www.leptraps.com. They are the main suppliers of these items. Leptraps stuff is a bit more expensive because it is more heavy duty. Leptraps site has some tutorials too.

[Chris Grinter]

You don't actually need a MV light, but some day I'm sure you'll work your way up to one. A basic 15w UV light is all you really need, and I even consider it a better bang for your buck/effort. I don't even run a MV myself. Halogen does not have a very wide spectrum and most of the light is turned into heat - you'd do better with a coleman lantern (literally).

You can use a standard off the shelf party-store light - but it's probably not that much cheaper than a light built by BioQuip. There are also some disadvantages to the standard party-fixture: The plastic guard around the light has to be removed since that blocks a lot of the UV. The very fact that they sit in a fixture also means they have less of a 360 degree output. I also wouldn't trust an indoor fixture to be weatherproof in the slightest! An outdoor UV fixture (if it exists) would likely be more expensive than buying through BioQuip and would be gigantic and bulky. Some commercial bulbs may also have UV-blocking paints on the bulb themselves which diminish their reach. If you come across a bargin-bin sale it might be worth it to buy one just to cannibalize for parts.

My advice is to bite the bullet and get a cheap 15w BioQuip UV bulb and hook it up to a $20 WalMart motorcycle battery. It'll last forever!

[prillbug2]

I just go to a hardware store and buy a 175 watt MV security light. Strip the wires and attach a new electrical plug with electrical tape. Plug them in, and they work fine. I have three of them. One is over twenty years old. I also have two self-ballasted 160 watt MV lights from BioQuip, which I simply screw into pot light holders from hardware stores. You could also buy metallic Halide lights as well, and those are available in most hardware stores. I know of a number of people who use them, and they do attract a large number of species that don't normally come into lights. It's your decision.
Jeff Prill

[pennswoods]

ANY light will attract SOME night flyers, it's just due to the high quantity of UV contained in the Mercury Vapor light's spectrum which makes them work so well, and also why the UV tube fluorescents work so well.

Do a search on "shoestring budget mercury vapor" I wrote a how-to article several years ago which Bruce Walsh put up on his Southeast Arizona lep site. It may still be there. If you have some basic skills with hand tools, you can build a MV collecting light every bit as good as a commercially available one for a tiny fraction of the cost. The pictures in the article were of one of my "first generation" lights I made. I made a few refinements over my next several builds which make it look a bit nicer but not work any better at all. It is sort of nauseating to see how much a LepTraps or BioQuip MV rig costs, when you know what actually goes into it.

The biggest hurdle at this time might be finding the basic parts at a hardware or farm supply store. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 did a number on the industry, and the transformers for common 175W merc lamps are getting harder and harder to find. Used to be able to go into any Lowe's or Home Depot and get a kit with the transformer, clear lamp, mogul socket, and all the other stuff you throw away for $20. A couple extension cords, an ammo can to house the transformer, a couple wire-nuts, and you have a great MV collecting light. I'm glad I made several and bought a stockpile of clear lamps when I could.

Making a fluorescent BL tube collecting light is a little more problematic but can also be done. $60 for a DC powered BioQuip 15W BL tube is not really a bad deal. I have one which is many years old and it has performed in a lot of harsh conditions. It did fail once however, a solder run on the circuit card contained in their little silver box melted and obviously caused the light to fail. I troubleshot the circuit and it was due strictly to horrible quality of the solder runs on the card. I repaired several runs on that card and it has worked just fine ever since.

[bugboys3]

I did the same thing that pennswoods did and followed the directions for building your own MV light set up on the Southeast Arizona site. I think I built it for under $40. I made a pvc frame with couplers that I can take apart easily to hold a white sheet to put behind the light for the insects to land on.

It has been hours of fun and it is fairly portable and we take it everywhere we go. As long as we are travelling by car. I also have a power inverter that I hook up to the car battery so that I can plug it into if we are not by a power source.

[Rev. Redmond Farrier]

That MV set up sounds like the way to go for me. I thank you very much for the help. I just got paid so I will be going by Home Depot tomorrow after work armed with this information.

As for the blacklight, I figure that I will just pick up one of these www.walmart.com/ip/Black-Light/8198021. It should hold me over until I am able to get the real thing. Even if it doesn't work for collecting, at least I will wind up with a blacklight around the house to play around with.

Again, thank you all very much for the info.

[Rev. Redmond Farrier]

My trip to HD was a bust. They no longer carry any form of mv fixture and no self ballasted bulbs. All I got was a cfl blacklight bulb for just under $5. I also picked up a florescent blacklight at Walmart for $10. It is the one in the link above. It is nice that it was half the price at the local store. The only cheap option I see is for me to order a self ballasted bulb that I found on Amazon.com (160 watt) that is $17.49 after shipping. It has a medium base, so I can just rig up one of the regular ceramic light sockets that I have laying around to get it burning.

[what]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-vapor_lamp#Bans

Hop on ebay and hope you get lucky like I did. A year or two back I picked up two ballasts/caps/sockets/bulbs sans the housings for right around $40 shipped. Good luck.

There is a very nice page on the net that can be found with some basic searching about how to setup your ballast in an ammo canister (30cal is suggested but I have a 50cal box). I have found that to be a very nice solution and my bulb, socket, and mounting setup all fits nice and safely inside.

[pennswoods]

good to know at least a few people have built lights instead of buying. That's one great thing about this hobby; with a little bit of knowledge, skill, and ability, a person can build just about every piece of equipment they would ever want.

[Rev. Redmond Farrier]

I got my self ballasted mv bulb through the mail the day before yesterday. I have it and a couple of cheap blacklights rigged up in my back field. This is my second night using it and I have to say that I am quite pleased with the results so far. I got a couple of types of small beetles that I have not seen around here before as well as some nice sphinx and tiger moths. I was hoping for more beetles, but it is a bit too late in the season for the ones I really want. So far, I only have about $40 into the setup. It is only that much because I have broken 2 cfl blacklight bulbs. I may add a second mv bulb when my finances improve, but at the moment property taxes take priority.

[jackblack]

Buy yourself an actinic blue flourecent tube 40 watt , its the same type of thing they use in bug zappers, I collect beetles commercially and can highly recommend it .
Black lights for party or disco is just that for a party limited insects.

[starlightcriminal]

Actinic lamps are found in marine aquarium stores, used for corals. They are very good, but not that cheap compared to most of the other lights you mention and may or may not fit into a "normal" fixture- often they have strange pin arrangements. But they do work great and last for a long time.

Second, look for bright lights, not necessarily UV lights. Almost all UV light is blocked by normal glass anyway, painted or not. You can find information about this on a laboratory site (check spectrofluorimetry) or something that relates to physics, but the UV that actually escapes the glass that houses the light generating apparatus (filament, gas, whatever it may be depending on your selection) is negligible. A lot of plants places try to sell UV lights at a higher cost for growing plants indoors- the reality is that most of that UV never escapes the bulb itself and besides that plants and most other organisms do not actually like UV on them anyway. So the best choice in bulb is something with a very bright light (which is where the UV comes in, usually the "brightest" lights include the UV end of the spectrum at <400nm anyway). If it is indicated anywhere on the packaging, a higher Kelvin rated bulb will give you the best effects. Big numbers, 10K+, will give you brighter lights that are more attractive to insects. Anything you can find, as cheap or pricey as it may be, that fits those criterion will work great as a light source. Then refer to everyone else for models of how to set one up, there are number of excellent methods from the folks above. I have used them myself on the small scale and have been delighted with the results. Haven't made a portable version yet, shame on me.

I get lots of beetles at black lights, much fewer moths, which was discussed previously. Actinic lights bring both in my experience and are better for urban settings because, while they are bright, they are also bluish and less obtrusive to neighbors at night. Certainly less obtrusive than a security flood light and with a much higher kelvin output. Also pretty energy efficient.

Good luck!

[Chris Grinter]

actinic=UV= fluorescent=black light Just different names for the same UV tube light. Some of them are built different and operate at slightly different wavelengths.

Brightness helps, but half of my traps have 8 watt UV bulbs. I can still fill a bucket trap with 8 watts of power, you don't NEED hundreds of watts and a generator. I also avoid lights that are too bright - over 400 watts it seems that a ton of insects drop off at the periphery of the light many feet away from the sheet. Then you have to cycle the bright light on and off to pull in what didn't come all the way in.

[prillbug2]

The other way to get the drop offs is to sweep the area, or beat it. And that can pull things in just by disturbing the local plants once every hour.
Jeff Prill