Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Has anyone had any experience with fluorescent lighting ballasts? I bought two nice tubes by zoomed. They both work fine in my coralife aquarium ballast, but when I plug them into a home depot ballast (80% less then the coralife, whence the appeal) they don't work.

When I plug in just ordinary home depot grow lights the ballast, it works fine... WTF?

Do the zoomed lights requuire a special type of a ballast in order to operate? If anyone knows, let me know. I've spent most of my sunday going nuts over this !

Thanks

I had the same problem also and I had to buy a balast from a pet store to get it to work. I believe that the problem is in the starter (or lack of in the home depot balast). the starter is the little cylinder, 1.5 x 3 cm that flashes briefly before the tube lits up...check your aquarium fixture, I am pretty sure you have one per tube. The home depot balast is supposedly self starter...but it does not work with those tubes, not sure why... I have tried to find those starter at various electricians to no avail...I finally bought a balast kit at petsmart and it works (29 CAD).

The ballast you got from homedepot does not have the starting power to light the tubes you have. A starter does that in most ballast. You can get a bottle starter from most pet stores. They are about 2 - 3 bucks.