What's wrong with my ballast?

[golfish]

I'm running 400 watt 10K XM bulbs (3 months old) on a dual 400 watt PFO HQI ballast (4 year old) I noticed a few days ago that one of the bulbs was dimming and in a matter of 2-3 seconds it would go bright, This cycle lasted all day. I swapped it with the bulb on the other side and the same thing happened.

I don't seem to be having much luck with the cheaper Asian bulbs on my 400 watt HQI ballast. The 20K CV bulbs didn't make it to two months. The 10K XM's are starting to fail at 3 months.

I was thinking I might have to replace the capacitor and or igniter. The ballast is 4-5 years old. It fires the Euro bulbs like the Radium and Ushio just fine but then these bulbs tuned better to run on the HQI.



Its not that noticeable unless your looking right at the tank.

TIA

Mark

 

[Anonymous]

Give PFO a call and see if you can get any info. In the long run, you will need to either use a different bulb, or get the issue fixed, otherwise, you are wasting a lot of bulbs that will cost more than getthing a new set of light setup. Good luck.

 

[golfish]

your right...I'll call PFO on Monday. I just replaced my HQI ballast with a standard ballast and the bulbs work just fine......I'm thinking the capasitor needs to be replaced?