Comapct flourecent HELP!

[jstdv8]

My parents bought a used tank off craigslist that had been sitting outside in their shed for the last year and it gets cold here in AK. we got teh tank and light home and found it had a real decent coralife 4x65w power compact with dual switches on it.
So he got it home and i came over after an hour and he had the lgith set up on his old tank with jsut the actinics on (becuase he loves blue/purple)
I came in and turned the 2 10k bulbs on with teh other switch adn they ran for a while and then i shut them all off while we were talking and flicked them all back on again. only 1 actinic and 2 10ks came on. tried the switches a few more times and nothing....
So I pulled the light that was not lighting out (wrecked it because of corrosion) then the other actinic wouldnt work (possibly because it needs both lamps in place to fire?)
so then I wanted to see if it was the bulbs or the ballast so i took one of the bulbs from the 10k side and put it in the bad actinic hole and neither bulb lit.
accidently turned on the side with now only 1 10k light on it and it lit off, I turned the switch off and then abck on again and now no lights come on at all.
Anybody have any experience with this? did both of my ballasts just go out? or did all four of my lights go out? what has the better odds? I d hate to replace one just to find out its the other.
Also, this fixture is going on a freshwater tank so replacing the existing bulbs is not entirely neccesary unless they are truely bad.
Thanks for the help

 

[btldreef]

When I purchased my used Coralife Aqualight which has MH's and PC's, the PC's did the same thing to me. It was because they were old and starting to corrode.
Save yourself the stress and bring the fixture to an LFS. Have them test the bulbs in your fixture in the store, that will rule out which is not working, bulbs or ballast.
Luckily mine was just the bulbs, I had to just spray some canned air on the fixture since I broke all the old bulbs due to corrosion as well. No bulbs have went out since.

 

[spanko]

Originally Posted by Jstdv8
http:///forum/post/3217164
......(wrecked it because of corrosion).........
This makes me think that there is enough corrosion that they are not contacting well. Get soem electrical contact cleaner first and clean all of the contact points.

Available at most auto parts stores or hardware stores.
BTLD has the other option of having you LFS check the bulbsfixture for you too.