Vertex 250W ballasts blew up my fixture!!!

[globaldesigns]

Well you are not going to believe this...

I was at Red Coral, talking with Kevin and Scott (parkinsn) and was all excited and bought some electronic ballasts to replace the ones that come with my current light fixture, along with some more LR.

I get home, take one ballast out of the box, hook it up. When I plug it in, it blows my Ground Fault, I reset try again, blows again. I take the second ballast and test, same thing... I am thinking maybe I now have too much load on this line, so I go get an extension cord and plug into a different electrical line. I then plug in the ballast and then hook up the light.... WELL OH MY GOD!!! I heard explosions, and smoke comes bellowing out the left side of my fixture like a MINI ATOMIC BOMB, and what a smell.

I started freaking, unplugging everything.

THANKS SCOTT AND KEVIN!!! Just kidding, how would you know.

Anyways, I take things apart and try to find what blew, I see some scorching and notice that the igniter module is gone. I removed it and called Kevin.

Kevin went beyond the call of duty, and offered to do anything to fix things... I can say that here is where some may take advantage of a nice guy like him, and try to get a new light... Not me! I took everything back and Kevin went home to grab an old fixture (same as mine) and we robbed it for the parts. I am back up.... Thanks to Red Coral/Kevin

So my question is why did these ballasts blew up my Corallife 4 ft - 2X250W MH, 2X96W PC... Parkinsn said he used similar on his, Kevin has sold third party ballasts for this brand also, so I am confused as is Kevin. Any insight would be appreciated, as I would love to upgrade the ballasts, but not at the cost of blowing up my house.

[parkinsn]

OMG!! Well I feel bad now for talking you into new ballasts. Sorry to hear about this. Im glad Kevin could help you out of a jam. Like I said I put a 2x250w PFO ballast on my coralife fixture with no issues. I would say your problem lies in the fact that for whatever reason coralife decided to put the ignitor in the fixture and not the ballast. I dont even know what to say, but sorry.

Scott

[globaldesigns]

Originally Posted by parkinsn

OMG!! Well I feel bad now for talking you into new ballasts. Sorry to hear about this. Im glad Kevin could help you out of a jam. Like I said I put a 2x250w PFO ballast on my coralife fixture with no issues. I would say your problem lies in the fact that for whatever reason coralife decided to put the ignitor in the fixture and not that ballast. I dont even know what to say, but sorry.

Scott

No need to apologize, things worked out and who knew! Now the questions is how do I remove the ignitors to run better ballasts, is this possible?

[parkinsn]

Im sure you by-pass the ignitor and run it that way just fine because the vertex will have one built in. But im no electrician, and I also would have to see how its wired.

[Delphinus]

I find electronic ballasts to be tiny bit dicier on the reliability and fussier overall. If there's any kind of short in the fixture that takes the current to the fixture frame, for example, and the frame is grounded.. some will react differently than others. I once had a electronic ballast where it shorted out to ground and that was the end of the ballast. 5 minutes old and it was garbage.

Your GFCI tripping indicates a ground fault to me (ie., current on the ground wire or a current imbalance, or whatever) and not an overloaded circuit. I realize that saying this now is a little like rubbing salt into your wounds, sorry not intended as such: I feel your pain, trust me (nothing was worse than the feeling of reading the warning label on my junked ballast: "Caution! Do not let lamp leads contact ground!") But in the future if your GFCI trips twice in a row like that, stop right there, and don't proceed until you've worked things over and found the ground fault.

I would check your fixture for any loose or pinched wires (you'll have to open it up and examine every wire, every connection). Dollars to donuts there is something.

[Red Coral Aquariums]

It is SUCH A RELIEF to see your lighting is back up and running. (I'm sure I added more gray hairs to my white mop.) Your patience, diligence, and understanding played a major roll in returning your lighting back to it's original output but then those 3 attributes are mainstay in keeping a successful reef.
I will rewire the my spare corallife fixture to bypass the igniter using the vertex ballast and let you know the results.
Thanks
Kevin

[Delphinus]

The ignitors are in the fixture itself and not an external ballast box? Ohhhh. Well, ok then. "Whoops" ... Guess that makes sense. For pulse start ballasts, the old cap-n-coil style, there are 3 components: the transformer, a capacitor, and the ignitor (sort of a specialized capacitor). Most of the ballasts requires that the "ignitor to lamp" distance be a fairly short distance, unless using special "long range" ignitors. I guess Coralife got around this issue by keeping the ignitors close to the lamp ... regardless if whether the other two components are remotely mounted or not.

The Vertex as an electronic ballast doesn't have an ignitor but as an electronic ballast doesn't need one. Anyhow hooking it up with the ignitor still in line will certainly have bizarre results.

Just take out the ignitors and wire the new ballast leads directly the lamp sockets. What I would do is go to Home Depot or whatever, and get a pair of female and male replacement extension cord plugs so that you can disconnect the ballast easily from the fixture. (Unless the new ballast already comes with quick disconnects.) So basically you have a slight DIY project on your hand to upgrade your fixture's ballast but it's not that bad, a screwdriver, wire strippers and mmmmaybe a crimper with some crimps is all you're going to need.

I'd be happy to help if you wanted an extra set of hands and/or tools.

[Mrfish55]

Is your fixture running SE or DE bulbs? I have a 6' coralife with SE bulbs and never had problems, I upgraded to 400w

[Delphinus]

I'm going to guess double-ended because your single ended lamps would likely have been running probe-start ballasts which are just the two components (transformer and capacitor) which are usually together and there's no ignitor (well there is, it's just "in" the lamp itself). Thus a ballast replacement on a single ended fixture is as simple as 'take the old ballast off' and 'replace it with the new one'.

Although it's just a guess on my part based on what little knowledge I have about how ballasts work (which I'm just compelled to share even if nobody's listening to me, because I may not know a lot of a lot of things, but I know a little about a little, and darn tootin' I'm going to pad my post count with stuff that on the surface looks helpful but when you get right down to it nobody's really listening to that Delphinus guy anyhow because he's just a nerd.)

[albert_dao]

Shouldn't the thread title be:

POS Coralife unit blew up on me after I upgraded the ballasts?

LOL