Broken Light

[jamesonwhiskey]

My actinic fluorescent lights have stopped working... they don't turn on anymore. My 150MH is still good... will not having the Actinics running for a while hurt my corals??

 

[bad coffee]

There might be a color shift in your corals from the different spectrum, but there shouldn't be a problem not running the actinics.

B

 

[Bryceandmandy]

+1........id try replacing the bulbs, if not it may be a problem with the wiring or the ballast.

 

[jamesonwhiskey]

It's definitely not the bulbs... I posted about this a couple weeks ago but no one answered my direct question about the Actinics.

They turn on sometimes... if I unplug and replug them in 4, 5 or even more times in a row which means they do not work when my timer goes on everyday. I've removed the timer and power strip and the same thing happens even when directly plugging into an outlet (at first I thought maybe the voltage was low and not even to start them up).

I've been thinking of upgrading to LED anyway so now I have the reason... just can't figure out what LED fixture I really need (while staying cost effective) to get to the depth of my tank which is 19" from glass to top of sand bed.

 

[Chiefmcfuz]

It would seem that you may need a new ballast. No, not having actinic lights will not hurt your corals.

 

[Bryceandmandy]

jamesonwhiskey, if you have the coralife aqualight pro[i think thats what its called] with the 150w mh and the two 65w pc's ive seen that problem first hand on another setup. they had the six footers though...three halides...4 96w pc's. idk what they ended up doing but it seems to be a reoccurring problem with coralife..my current nova t5 did the same thing as well

 

[jamesonwhiskey]

yup, thats the one. i got it used on ebay about a year ago so i'm not sure how old it really is. i'm going with a Black Vanilla 120W LED and will try to fix the ballasts on the bad light to resell on here