Lighting Emergency

[KidNano]

I came home to find my lights out. curious. Well I check the plug and it was plugged in. It's a T5 Tek Retrofit 2x54 kit. I got it about 3 months ago with brand new bulbs. Never had any trouble. Has run perfectly until now. OK so in the last few days I fried the power bar that it was plugged into because I had a water leak and the bar was sitting in a pool of water. Now I have them plugged directly into the wall. They worked fine that way Tuesday and this morning when I plugged them in before I left for work. I took all the wire connections apart and everything looks perfectly healthy. I took the bulbs out and they seam fine and the endcaps are waterproof so they looked great as well.

It has to be the Ballast right? If it were the bulbs would the ballast still get warm or only if electricity is actually flowing through the bulbs. Ballast is cold.

Please give me advice.

Thanks.

 

[reefman23]

Sounds like the ballast. Where did you buy the retros from? They may be under warranty. Sounds like maybe they shorted out.

Do you have any other lighting on the tank?

Jesse

 

[KidNano]

I bought it at coral oasis. no other lighting. sorry i;m typing with one hand. holding sleeping baby. scared to wake her up. fussy day. should i contact tek?

 

[reefman23]

I would see if coral oasis can help you out first. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you out.

Jesse

 

[KidNano]

do you have any lights i ca temporarily borrow? I don't have the money to buy anything right now and my wife would kill me if I did. I'll call Ben tomorrow and see if he can offer me anything.

 

[KidNano]

I talked with Ben. He sold me another light bulb so I could see if it was a bad bulb. He said that with some of the Tek Fixtures, if one bulb goes out it cuts off electricity to the other bulb. I got the bulb tried it in place of both bulbs nothing. Took the whole thing apart again put it back together and nothing. I tried wiring it for just one lamp per the diagram with the new bulb and that didn't work either. Ben was pretty sure that those ballast just don't go bad. I'm bringing my hood down to show him and he said they'd give me a ballast if he had one around otherwise they're replace everything after TEK comes down and looks at it. I'm pretty sure he won't make me wait because my tank is under distress and I've spent a lot of money at his store. My Tomato clown actually kicked his Anemone out of thier little enclave. It was floating around the tank and he didn't even care. :cry: I put it back. I'll let you know what happens today.

 

[The Kapenta Kid]

I suspect it is your ballast and the water incident with the power strip that caused the problem. I don't know how it would work for a couple of days after the incident and then go phut, but perhaps the electronic circuitry in a ballast can be overstressed and die gradually rather than suddenly.
I once plugged a 110 volt ballast into a 240 volt socket--and that was sudden and spectacular death :mrgreen:

 

[KidNano]

Yeah I was curious how it kept working for two days as well. The power strip was all warped and melted. I'm so thankful that it didn't burn the house down. I have structural insurance but not personal property coverage yet so I would have been SOL. Not to mention It's a Condo and could have potentially burned 7 other peoples homes as well. Thats a freaky thing.

I'm going to run the fixture over for them to check out this afternoon so hopefully I'll have lights again tonight.

 

[KidNano]

Kathryn was there. They have an extra ballast at their house from a unit they were going to use and then didn't. She's going to bring it in for me because I can't really wait a week for the new Unit from TEK. I might not be able to get it until tomorrow.

Mean while I've been using my 28 watt PC Coralife fixture that I had on my Fuge. It's working 24 hour shifts now and not really doing much for the coral but at least the fish appreciate it.

 

[KidNano]

And God said let there be light...... And there was. Got a new ballast for free. Very happy about that. I think sometime soon I'm going to get another one 48" T5 fixture so I can run 4 bulbs. Instead of MH. My tank is starting to run a lot warmer and I don't want to make it worse with MH. I might need a chiller as it is.

 

[reefman23]

Very cool. How is everything doing?

Jesse

 

[KidNano]

The tank is doing fantastic. I'm a little concerned about the temp during the summer. If I can get some extra $$ together I'm going to get another 2x54 T5 and some fans to blow through my hood. It gets pretty warm up there and the tank has been getting up around 83-84 by the end of the day. I keep the AC on all day at 78 when I'm not home and 72 when we are. My wife is home all day with our baby now, but the temp is staying up there. I've heard you and others talk about higher temps from pumps and stuff. I've got the Mag9 and I might switch that out eventually as well. need to look into it. Othere then that I think this lights out for a couple of days was good for the tank. all the nasty algae dissapeared and I've got green (pre-coraline) growing everywhere. pretty soon my entire tank is going to be pink and purple. My Watanabe's are doing fantastic but they eat every drop of food I put in there and the smaller fish are too intimidated to come up and get it. I'm having to put larger amounts of food in so it'll sink to the bottom but we all know that's not good for the tank. I did just vacum the sand which is why it's so blindingly white in the pic above. :cool1: The only coral I've lost is the Ricordia, but now I've got a colony of Zoo's that won't open up and I can't figure out why. there aren't any nudi's that I can see on them. I've been watching them for about a week now. Nothing.