Oops!!!

Almost had a meltdown!!!! I hace a Coralife 2X96watt pc system on my 40. Well i just had to do a little repair work to it. It started smoking so i turned it off....and of course took it apart to see what ws the cause. looks like salt creep got to the wires for the ballasts and grounded to the aluminum frame. (Yes i regularly clean the creep) Coralife uses wire crimps to connect all thre wires. which is great except in my case. wht i did was remove all the wire ties and solder all the connections and used liquid tape then het shrinked each wire. this should take care of anything that might want to get to the wires......never thought to check something like this out until this happened. And I love my system and more than likely didnt have to go to that extrem to repair it. But i figured i had it apart and had the supplies and figured, why not.....i would now suggest to all that have similar systems to check them out once in a while.....no one wants a melt down!!!!

 

From what I saw working around coralife products is consistent wiring problems, especially w/ thier PC fixtures an dparticularly the ones with the silver or sandy colored housing. They build up w/ salt creep, ground just like you had, then fry. There seemed to be a 2 month period were just about every other fixture was returned, around july of 05' is when i saw the biggest return of them. Same exact problem everytime, usually fixable but very frustrating. So much so that my old employer actuall stopped carrying thier lighting fixtures in place of the new current stuff.

 

Mine is the Black Aluminum dual 96 model. but i'm sure my fix will be a cure all for this system. however i will take the time once in a while to open it and clean it. I really like them and they work well. i just feel they could of used a better connection system. just a few cents more on heat shrink would of cured a lot of problems.