Coralife 30" T5HO light stays on for one a second

My coralife T5HO light only stays on for a second or two and then turns off completely. I then, cant get it to turn back on. Every once in a while I will plug it in and turn it on to try and get it to work. It was on a timer for a few months and worked fine with no problems.

I brought it home and plugged it in there.. and it turned on no problem.. then bring it to my apartment and plug it in and the problem seems to magically appear.

Tapping the light does nothing.


Do you think it is bad bulbs?
Bad ballast?

 

If it works in one place and not another, I would suspect a voltage issue at your apartment. You may want to have the electricity tested, it could be high, low or spiking. Most of the ballasts these days have emergency shutoff in case something like the voltage is wrong and they sometimes prevent you from re-starting for a certain amount of time. More common on the MH ballasts, but could be on others as well. I'd at least call Coralife and ask what they think.

 

Could this be a problem even if they worked here at the apartment for like 9 months. Every other electronic thing here seems to be working just fine. I heard something in another forum that the timer that it was hooked up to could have damaged the internal ballast??

Is this true? If so is there a way to test to see if the ballast is working properly?

 

Tagging along... Same problem. Coralife fixture sitting in my closet.

 

I try not to bash companies, but to be perfectly honest, Coralife products don't tend to be very good at all. I've just seen endless problems with their products, so, I'll say something here.... So, anyways, it could just be ridiculously sensitive. Still, though, that dosn't mean there isn't an issue that should be addressed though.

 

Is this a new or older unit? If I recall, Coralife changed the ballasts is uses, you may want to look at replacing the ballast with a decent electronic ballast if you have the older magnetic one.

Of course, by that time you may have paid more than the unit is worth on Craig's List.

Jeff

 

the unit is about 9 months old. Lets say that the electrical currents are out of whack and that is the problem.. how would you go about fixing that??

 

Have you tried a different outlet? Maybe the receptacle is bad and needs to be replaced.

 

I have tried it in different outlets around the aprtment.. same problem. Brang it home and it started right up.

 

is it possible that a crappy timer can damage the ballast of a t5ho unit?