my MH bulb is flaking?

so my 150 MH fixture/bulb has worked great except 1 thing.

I was looking at the bulb while the light was off and around the edges of the actual "bulb"/round part its like white and a little flaky. There are even some white flakes that seem to have fallen to below where the glass encloses the fixture. Any idea whats going on?

 

how old is the bulb and who makes it?

 

the ballst/bulb/and pendant is from fish need it;lights; food;Sponge, seems to be pretty high quality stuff on there and its only about 4+ months old.

 

actually maybe 5+ months

 

Those bulbs are horrible quality. I would suspect that the bulb has a filter coating it to block out either the excess of yellow wavelength OR to block some dangerous UV from the poorly designed bulbs

 

The flakes are probably the filter burning off

 

are you sure the bulb is flaking and its not saltcreep?

 

it is an enclosed pendant, how could that be salt creeep? its directly on the bulb also.

 

I agree with Dingo nearly all bulbs that come with no-name brand fixtures are cheap, think of the ones on ebay. The fixture may be well built, but the bulb sounds to be of poor quality.

 

well its not if its in a enclosed fixture, but yes salt will get on the bulb if its not covered.