Ballast and Hood Wiring Questions

[Reef Goalie]

Ok so I'm currently using 2 250W 20K Radiums over my 75 gallon reef. The dual magnetic ballast I was using (from Energy Savers Unlimited) started misfiring, only firing one lamp, sometimes no lamps. I purchased two Lumatek electronic 250W ballasts from Marine Depot. Each of these came with the standard three wire black, white, green. When I cut the cord from the old hood to the ballast, it contained six wires, black, white, green, orange, red, yellow. I attempted to wire up three wires to three, matching the green, white black and going red hot, orange common and yellow ground. Needless to say (or I wouldnt be writing this!) upon firing up the ballasts, nothing happened at all.

Is anyone familiar with the old Energy Savers Unlimited hoods and ballasts? I need to undersatnd how the wiring is configured to the sockets. I think Coralife bought them but the wiring is different. The hood came with a quick connect between the hood and ballast that has 6 pins, five standard and one flat.

I am looking to find out how to wire the two new ballasts in to the old hood using the wire existing. It would be very difficult to rewire the sockets individually as there is no way to access the top of the hood underside (it is riveted shut) with a plate covering the wiring.

Any help would be appreciated, as I have the two new electronic ballasts waiting to be installed and dont know when the old ballast will finally give it up and die.

 

[Anonymous]

3 wires from the ballast only? Is that including the power wires?

Wiring to the sockets should be 2 wires only (maybe 3 if there's a ground), and the way you wire the socket wires is irrelevant. However I have an old custom sealife ballast and there are a ton of different colored wires in it that don't do anything (don't know why they even are in there).

If you have the wiring diagram from the new ballast I would attempt to crack open the old fixture, find the two wires that go to the bulb, and forget about the rest.

 

[pbaldwin]

it sounds like the old ballast was a single unit that fired both bulbs? and the new unit is two separate ballasts?

If that the case the easiest and probably safeest thing to do is disassemble the existing hood and correctly wire the new ballasts to the sockets.