Why do my new HQI bulbs trip my GFCI (Somewhat urgent)

[cwatkins]

Hi All,

There's some urgency to this issue as I'm going out of town in a week, and I don't want the house sitters to have to worry about my tank crashing because of this.

So the story goes...

I want to switch to LED in the new year, so I've gone with the inexpensive Artemis Ebay bulbs (MH 250W DE) in the mean time. And all of a sudden I have these crazy GFCI problems now when the Halides are running.

I have 2 GFCI's behind my tank. One is dedicated, and the other is shared with the rest of the room's plugs. Both exhibit this problem.

After replacing my Pheonix 14K bulbs with the Artemis bulbs that everyone loves (I like them), my GFCI has been randomly tripping. Three times today already.

When it trips it takes out the whole controller including the return pump and all lighting.

Why would changing the bulbs be causing a GFCI to trip? I may have even narrowed it down to only one of my lights. I ran 1 side with Artemis and the other had the existing Pheonix bulb, and it ran okay for a week. And now that both are running Artemis, all hell is breaking loose.

And I don't think it's the bulb as I've tried 2 different Artemis bulbs and they both exhibit the same issue.

My Ballast is: Sunlight Supply Galaxy Electronic Metal Halide Ballast (2 x 250 Watt)

Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated!

Worse case I can just put both Pheonix bulbs while I'm away.