ballast bad?

rtoycrow

Member
I have 3 icecap ballast 250 watt that i bought back in 2009 and like a dummy i didn't register them for warrenty so i need a little help. One of the ballast i have work fine the other two i am having a problem. One i have will cut the light on for about three minutes then it cuts off and starts again when it cools down. I switched lights out because one i pretty new and it does the same thing. The other wont cut the light on at all. I have a volt meter and it is getting power just wont turn the light on. Are .either of these ballast bad? Thanks for the help
 

acrylic51

Active Member
Have you checked power to the bulb socket itself??? It could be a possibility that you have 3 bad bulbs???! Have you tried the bulb the lights consistently in the other questionable sockets???
IceCap is out of business, but I thought I read somewhere that someone is servicing their products, but not sure who!!!
 

rtoycrow

Member
wow, maybe thats why they haven't returned my emails, i have seen these 1000 watt ballasts, do you know if you can run 4 250 watt bulbs off that one ballast?
 

acrylic51

Active Member
No you can't use 1000W ballast to power 4 250W MH bulbs. The ballast will power specifically what their rated for!!!! 1000W ballast will power 1 1000W MH bulb.... 1 250W MH ballast per 250 W MH bulb.
 

tangs rule

Active Member
Quote:
Originally Posted by acrylic51 http:///forum/thread/387038/ballast-bad#post_3402467
No you can't use 1000W ballast to power 4 250W MH bulbs. The ballast will power specifically what their rated for!!!! 1000W ballast will power 1 1000W MH bulb.... 1 250W MH ballast per 250 W MH bulb.
+1 and be very careful measuring voltages on a plugged in ballast - The initial (starting) voltage on an HQI DE ballast can be several thousand volts.....I blew up one of my multimeters once trying to look at output voltage on a magenitic ballast.. It was set on 600vac - but the voltage was probalby a few times higher than that, cause as soon as i touched the output terminals, the meter "popped" and never measured anything again.
 

rtoycrow

Member
i figured it wouldn't work, guess i am gonna have to scrap these ballast since coralvue won't work on these models, guess my fish are gonna have to live with one light for a while til i get some money for more lights, glad i don't have any coral than mushrooms. thanks for the help guys
 

scsinet

Active Member
Google "ballastwise"
Much cheaper than CoralVue or Icecap, similar footprint, and good performance IME.
 

rtoycrow

Member
i found a cheap t-5 fixture on ebay i am gonna try out, if it turns out ok, i will probably by a few more of those, thanks for the info though, i will keep that in mind if these turn out to be garbage
 
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