Vertex 250W ballasts blew up my fixture!!!

[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

[globaldesigns]

The bulbs are double ended.

Kevin is going to test things on removing the ignitor, the problem is I think that the fan is also using the ignitor module, so how do we remove, what wires to where and what about the fan.

Kevin, perform your magic.

[Delphinus]

The fan can't be using the ignitor for anything useful, it could just be that it's running off the voltage though, but even that is a bit weird to me.

Can you post a picture of the innards?