Yeah I will talk to Harvey at marine aquaria and explore the options. I just started flickering yesterday
He did mention it could be "breaking in". So I'll see today what's happening and go from there. I hope it's not the ballast as. It's not stocked

I'll also try a new outlet as it may be the draw from the wall

I wonder if it may be the plug from ballast to pendant

Maybe buy a radion lol

Just saying

I just had a similar issue; was temporarily running a 250w 20k mogul lamp (not sure what it was, think it was a Radion) in a temporary pendant, powered by a Vertex electronic ballast. When I went back to the permanent fixture on the same ballast running a (new) cheap eBay DE lamp it would start fine but after warming up would begin to flicker a little. I gave it a good couple weeks to see if it would break in, but always the same behaviour. So I swapped in an old Phoenix lamp on the same fixture and ballast and it did the same thing but not as badly. I then went back to my PFO HQI ballast on the same fixture and now both of those bulbs run fine, so in my case it was the ballast acting up.

Why you gotta be like that :)


Makes me wonder as I'm on a vertex ballast

Picked up a new giessemann 21k bulb. And ran for a day. It was orange/pink all day. But know flicker.
I am going to try one more time and if not then try a pheonix.

I'm wondering if the vertex ballast is not capable of this bulb.

Is anyone running this bulb

Ushio
 

Not sure if you liked the bluer colour or not but I'm telling you, go with a 14k Ushio. I think by far the nicest colour, but it is a little whiter than you'd think.
I ran these for years prior to my LEDs, are you running any t5 as well as?

fixed :)

I too used those Ushios for a while and you're right, it is a nice crisp white, even though it's marketed as a 14K bulb. Compared to the Phoenix 14k my eyes render it (the Ushio) as somewhere between a 10k and a 14K so probably a 12K in colour cast. It grew SPS like there was no tomorrow !

I would like to stick to the blue bulbs as I'm not running supplement lighting yet.

As of now the light issue is fixed. I took both bulbs back to the lfs and tested them in a icecap ballast.

The one was def off color. The other fine with no flicker. I put origanal bulb back in and so far no flicker.

I am very interested in a pheonix. And will try that next Time around

So I lied bulb still flickers. Doesn't mater hot or cold. It never flicker on the icecap ballast so I'm thinking it's the vertex ballast. While I may be able to try a bunch if different bulbs. It would be silly for me to run out and buy $400 in bulbs when the ballast was 1/4 of that.
I believe the giessemann bulbs to be of good quality and is also stocked buy lfs. I am thinking to buy a new ballast and am looking for suggestions. Ballast are lacking in options since the led revolution but there are a few avalible.

I have been looking at the coralvue luxcore. Any review on this. It does have a super lumen option to overdrive the bulb.


http://reefbuilders.com/2011/07/12/l...last-coralvue/