swordfish Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 Hi, my name is Jeff and I am a custom sealife 32 watt retrofit ballast-fryer. Last night I went to change the location of the hole into which the cord going from my ballast enters the lighting hood on my seven bow. This required me to unwire the ballast from the lights. Like the grand mashall of some cosmic dork parade, I failed to unplug the ballast and, I guess, the whole thing was silently fried when the wrong two wires touched each other. No bang,no buzz, no smoke....it just didn't work when I got it all back together. A ballast that I had in service for less than a week was instantly rendered useless and I doubt the warranty is going to cover it. I mean why should it cover such a fcuk-up? Before you go to a local chain pet store looking for a replacement, let me give you this advice: Forget it. They only carry ballasts that have 55 watts. Ditto with the local hardare store. Ogh they do indeed have 32 watt ballasts for circle flourescent lights but these cannot even bo modified to work with the 32 watt lamps used in a retrofit since, well, I forgot why but they gave me some perfectly understandable explaination at the hardware store, I just don't remember it. They were nice enough to test the ballast for me with a multimeter, after which they told me to put a fork in it, it's done. This is also not an item, especially with a nice long set of cords on it, stocked by your typical electrical supply house. I checked at two of them as well. Bottom line is that if you gotta have just the ballast real fast, you can pay $30 for the ballast and another $20 in shipping to get it overnighted to you from theaquarium.com, or you can pay $30 for the ballast and $7 normal shipping and get it whenever UPS feels liek sending it to you. in the mean time you can thank your lucky stars you saved the old lighting setup init's entirety because you are at least going to be using that until the new one comes in. Like me. Go ahead and laugh if you must, I don't mind. Someone should enjoy this on some level, but for the rest of you, let this tale be a cautionary one about what happens when the worst happens to your lighting and you have to deal with it. For those of you with the money and corals that have got to have that light (I have none yet but I was going to in a day or so...whew!) it may be worth it to have a backup bulb and ballast on hand. JCS Link to comment
dickwayne Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 On Sunday, I bought this nifty $20 electronic thermometer. I used it once, and it worked awsome. I thought it would be cool for checking top off water and such. One hour later I had it sitting on top of my aquarium, and it fell in. Now I have a twenty dollar peice of plastic. So don't think you're the only jack a$$ out there. We're everywhere!! Link to comment
dickwayne Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 I think we should make this the, "Post your retard moves so others can read and not feel bad about there own mishaps" thread. Link to comment
jjharrisx4 Posted June 12, 2003 Share Posted June 12, 2003 check out this link for a PC ballast...this is the workhorse 3 and it should light your bulb...no problem. Only 20$ and just a few bucks to ship b'cuz it's light. http://www.petsupplyliquidator.com/htm/apa...tballast.htm#b1 Link to comment
jjharrisx4 Posted June 13, 2003 Share Posted June 13, 2003 Hey swordfish...I have a CSL 55w ballast that I wanted to shorten the wires on. When I took apart the metal box it had a workhorse 3 ballast inside. I guess that the above message for a ballast link was OK. Link to comment
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