Electronic ballast making heater go screwy?

[Anonymous]

On my new 18 nano, I have a Won pro heat and a 150 watt DE pendant with a Reliable electronic ballast.
The heater works fine when the light is off. When the light is on the heater seems to heat the water a whole bunch (if the light is on and the heater is unplugged the temp does not rise).

Can the electronic ballast be making the heater go screwy?

TIA

RR :mrgreen:

 

[zebrasoma171]

Apparently it can. There is a fairly long thread on Reef Central right now with many people having similar problems.

Al

 

[texman]

I switched to 400W E-ballasts a few months ago and all my X-10 controllers went haywire. The electronic ballasts put out a lot of radiofrequency noise and will interfere with other things using solid state controllers hooked to the same circuit. If you have a seperate circuit available (ie another outlet controlled by a different fuse or breaker) plug your heater in there and see if the problem goes away. You should also plug the timer for the light into a power bar with a line isolator (radio shack)

 

[Anonymous]

How come my Icecap doesn't interfere then?

 

[Anonymous]

are those bluelines even FCC / UL approved?

The icecap dont put out near the RF noise as the bluelines do

I was going to get bluelines till I heard about all the problems they cause.

You can get filters to limit the noise, I'm just gonna wait for them to fix the problems

 

[SPC]

I have no problem with interference from my Ice Cap ballasts (3 660s) either. They are located on the same circuit and about 3 feet away from all of my X-10 modules.
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys.

I put the heater on a Ranco (there is only one circuit in the room) and the problem is solved. I will most likely change out the won heater in that tank at some point. Or perhaps I will sell the Reliable ballast. I may also try a line isolator just to see what happens.

I don't know a thing about bluelines.

A side note. About 5 months ago my 150 Reliable and 150 Icecap e ballasts went out. They had been working fine for about 9 months. The ballasts were very close to each other and I wonder if the RF from the Reliable, had something to do with the ballasts going down.

RR