Coralife Fixture Mods?

[Madreefer]

I have a Coralife Aqualite Pro with 2 250w DE. I would like to switch it to 400w. Should'nt be that hard as really just changing the ballasts. Some guy told me that it can not be done as there is some sort of computer board in the fixture that will get fried. Has anyone tried this?

[xtreme]

How deep is your tank? Are you sure you need 400w? If you are running the stock coralife ballasts replacing those with "good" 250w ballasts will make a huge difference. I run 250w DE on a 30" deep SPS tank and my corals are looking pretty good.

[Madreefer]

Originally Posted by xtreme

How deep is your tank? Are you sure you need 400w? If you are running the stock coralife ballasts replacing those with "good" 250w ballasts will make a huge difference. I run 250w DE on a 30" deep SPS tank and my corals are looking pretty good.

It's 29" deep. So what is a good ballast? I know the Coralife are junk and was waiting for them to go on the fritz before a potential upgrade. I don't need 400w I'm on breakup and just bored. When I'm bored I usually like to spend money. Fixture's 3 years old so just getting prepared.

[globaldesigns]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

It's 29" deep. So what is a good ballast? I know the Coralife are junk and was waiting for them to go on the fritz before a potential upgrade. I don't need 400w I'm on breakup and just bored. When I'm bored I usually like to spend money. Fixture's 3 years old so just getting prepared.

Actually the Coralife ballasts are not junk. They are magnetic, but I did some research after blowing the ignitor in mine when I tried to upgrade the ballast. I found out my 250W ballasts really do push out that wattage, not like some people say, and they are quite good magnetic ballasts.

If you want to upgrade the wattage, you will need to remove the 2 ignitors in the fixture itself, these units also have tied into them the fan, so you will have to do some rewiring to remove the ignitors and tie the fan into some other power. Then I don't think you will have a problem with just using 400W ballasts with bulbs.

If you don't remove the ignitors and try a third party ballast, you will have a nuclear cloud come out of your fixture.

[mseepman]

Rather than change the MH's I just changed the PC's over to 4 T5HO's which made a dramatic change for me. It was a lot easier than doing the MH changeover.

[Madreefer]

Originally Posted by mseepman

Rather than change the MH's I just changed the PC's over to 4 T5HO's which made a dramatic change for me. It was a lot easier than doing the MH changeover.

Care to share the details and what to get?