singing icecap: has anyone experienced it?

[aquarookie]

Hi folks,

Well, I FINALLY got my electronic ballast, Yippee!! . It's only been 5 years since I said I would get one :lol:. At any rate, I ordered one and it arrived today . You must forgive my laughs and grins, I am just so excited, I got the ballast and three new bulbs today, it is like Christmas with presents

It is an icecap 250 electronic ballast. I bought it with the PFO converter plug, wired it up (correctly as far as I know), plugged it in and here is the weird thing. It did not start the bulb right away, but first it started singing and whistling (quite loud). Then the bulb pulsed/flickered, the ballast whistled some more (a total of about 10-12 seconds) and then it went silent and proceeded to operate as expected, no more surprises.

Oh, and now that the ballast is silent, the bulb is buzzing :lol:

Has anyone else experienced this, is it normal or does any of it need to be returned? Both the bulb and the ballast are brand new, the bulb is an XM 15,000K and they were purchased at Marine Depot.

Thanks in advance for advice

 

[Kraut!]

I am wiring mine up right now.... I'll see if mine does the same

 

[twilliard]

On a new lamp my icecaps will sing a little before firing them up. Once the lamp broke in it fires right up.

I noticed that the lamp is new... you may have a hard time firing it up for the first few days.
My new 250W Hamilton lamps are a pain to fire new. But my reeflux lamps start right away. Also I had read some where that the XM's are hard to fire, hmm not sure.

Call me Julia if you need help with it (and maybe get some edit-torch from you )

 

[aquarookie]

Todd,

Thanks for the encouraging news... but is it common for it to "sing" for a while AFTER firing the bulb? At any rate, the bulb/ballast combo works great once the whistling stops

Wait, did I say you can have my frogspawn???? I thought I said you could have some of the torch... Well, if that's not what I said, that's what I meant at any rate :lol:. The frog spawn is not fraggable quite yet, the two heads are still stuck real close together and I don't want to risk splitting it. Oh, and it's probably best if you call me since once again I lost your phone number:lol:

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Hey Julia, I thought you really needed that Frogspawn for your own tank?

 

[aquarookie]

Yes Mike, I did, which is why I said I can't frag it any time soon . But I am all for sharing frags when the corals grow out, 'cause you never know when something might change in your own tank and a coral might die... I mean hypothetical you, of course, not You

BTW, the frogspawn looks quite glorious, it is all poofy and huge

 

[twilliard]

Sorry about that. It was early when I typed that. I will go fix that.
I will call you about that topic.

About the ballast. The singing you here is the ballast wanting to start a lamp. It should quite as soon as the lamp fires.
If it is still buzzing when the lamp fires I would look into the wiring-setup.