MH ballast hissing, lights flicker

K

kaledrina

All of a sudden my MH ballast is making a hissing noise and the bulb flickers. The bulb doesn't turn on after a while and not sure what to do... It's a 250w,120v icecap ballast with a 250w bulb. What should I look out for or try to do to make this thing work? New lights and parts are definitely not affordable in the least for me right now. (Yay taxes and car repairs! lol)

I got the set up used and the lights should still work. Supposedly has another month or two of good juice to supply to the tank. Shouldn't the bulb still work even if its past its prime?
 
bulbs are gas filled and fire a carbon-arc element to start the combustion and make it glow.


The bulb could theoretically be bad and would not fire, it would attempt to fire, false start, etc.

See if another member has a used 250W bulb you can test with. Or find someone who can take your bulb and test it (some LFS should be able to.)

This will prove it isn't the ballast.

BD
 
How long can my tank go w/o lighting before it starts to negatively impact the inhabitants (corals, coralline)?

Going go see about going to the LFS today or tomorrow. I think its the ballast since the hissing is coming from inside the ballast. I hope its something fixable. I can't afford new lighting parts for the tank for at least another month! :?
 
if the hissing is coming from the ballast and not the bulb, it might be worth calling Icecap. I do agree, stop into a local LFS and have them check out the bulb and maybe take the ballast in and see if they can wire it up and do a test fire with one of their bulbs. This way you can determine if it's the bulb or the ballast at fault and then can address it at that point
 
Called Icecap.. Going to mail the ballast tomorrow and cross my fingers. They seemed friendly enough.

Thanks to Pampee (kuyatwo) for loaning some T5 lights in the mean time.
 
They sent it back. Strange suspicion that I wasted $12 to ship it since the problem was not fixed. I know it's nothing else. I haven't touched any of the wiring/etc since putting everything together.

The invoice doesn't have anything under the comments section. Thankfully I wasn't charged anything but this is still frustrating.
 
@kaledrina wrote:
They sent it back. Strange suspicion that I wasted $12 to ship it since the problem was not fixed. I know it's nothing else. I haven't touched any of the wiring/etc since putting everything together. The invoice doesn't have anything under the comments section. Thankfully I wasn't charged anything but this is still frustrating. said:
Well before you shipped it off I offered to test your bulb or loan you one, did you ever actually verify your bulb was any good ?
Click to expand...
 
They swapped it out for another one apparently. I know jack about MH and how to set them up. You'd think if the bulb flickers that the bulb is good, right... maybe?

The cat also has a tendency to go behind the stand but I doubt with the weight of the equipment and wires that she did anything.

No idea where to start for troubleshooting. About ready to toss the tank out the window and call it a night. :roll:
 
What type of bulb are you trying to fire with this; an SE or a DE?
I have a 250W DE Bulb and pendant that you can use to test out the ballast. the connection is incredibly simple if you have a cheap 49 cent wall outlet
 
It's a double end... but you're really far.

Of course now I'm having serious doubts about keeping the whole set up and possibly down-grading to something even smaller. The pros/cons balance out but in the end I'm not giving the critters the attention they need. Then again I'm almost at the point where I've gone so far there's no going back.
 
According to this web site, it might not be the bulb. But still not sure what this means. Do I need to run the ballast on it's own outlet instead of sharing with other stuff? Is there some part in the wiring that needs to be replaced with something else? Icecap even gave me another ballast so it's doubtful there's something wrong with this one.

The bulb is the correct bulb for the ballast too.

http://tinyurl.com/4h2eet
 
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