I need serious help with my icecap 660 vho's

[Roblox84]

I have this problem with my Icecap 660 that has left me puzzled and wanting to tear my tank down because I am tired of putting money into an aquarium.
Anyway's over the past few day's I have noticed that my VHO's were not coming on when the timer was set to turn them on. After unplugging the timer and plugging it back in the lights would come on. I did this for several day's and each time the lights would come on if I just unplugged the timer and plugged it back in. I figured it was a problem with the timer so I took the timer and turned the dial a few times to see if the lights would come on and they did. After this, everything worked fine for about a month without the need for resetting the timer each time. A few day's ago the same problem arose but this time when I tried to turn the lights on, they just came on for a fraction of a second and turned off. After several attempts to turn them on they finally came on. Now i've been doing this for the past two months and it got very annoying so I took my ballast to my lfs to test it and it did the same thing with their lights (only stayed on for a bit). I ended up picking up another Icecap 660 ballast (used but was tested for a few minutes in lfs) from them and when I hooked it up to my VHO's they came on and stayed on for about 10 minutes and then turned off. I tried to turn them on again but the new ballast would just give off an electrical noise and the bulbs wouldn't even flash. Finally after trying to restart the bulbs several times the ballast fuse finally gave out. So I plugged in my original ballast and it would fire the bulbs usually about the second or third time, sometimes they come on even on the first try. I checked all the wiring, harness, end caps, took the bulbs out and did the cont. test and everything was fine. As I am writing this the lights and ballast are working fine, but when I plug in a new ballast, it just fries. Does anyone know what might be going on? I would also like to mention that the current ballast that i'm using was also repaired by icecap maybe 5 months ago so there is no reason why it should die so soon. If I don't find a super cheap ballast or I decide not to tear down my tank I think i'm going with a full enclosed fixture with halides so that I never have this problem again. It seems as though retrofit is just not the way to go, just way to many wires.

 

[Gold Stripe]

Are you still running it through the timer? Timer may be bad and not feeding full current to the ballast which is frying your ballast.

Otherwise there has to be a short in the wiring somewhere or a bad bulb.

 

[Roblox84]

Are you still running it through the timer? Timer may be bad and not feeding full current to the ballast which is frying your ballast.

Otherwise there has to be a short in the wiring somewhere or a bad bulb.

I have thought about the timer issue and this is why....The timer I have doesn't fit into my power strip because there is no grounding prong inlet on the power strip, so I use an adapter that lets me go around this. I was running the timer without a ground, which in turn might have not provided a ground for the Icecap ballast, but I am not sure how important this is since I have cut the grounding prong on such things as power tools and they work just fine. But who knows, maybe lighting is a whole nother issue. I am currently not running it throught the timer, but what puzzles me is why would another Icecap ballast immediately die when I plugged it in, but now my primary ballast still lights up the bulbs? And I looked for a short in the wiring or even any wires that appeared stripped but there is just not enough wiring (comparatively speaking) to short out somewhere. The wires just go a few feet from the harness into the end caps and that's it, there's no place for them to touch another wire to short it out or get cut on anything.

 

[Fishamatank]

I was running the timer without a ground, which in turn might have not provided a ground for the Icecap ballast, but I am not sure how important this is since I have cut the grounding prong on such things as power tools and they work just fine.

Don't do that.

 

[Gold Stripe]

IceCap is an electronic ballast. Absolutely needs a ground. But I think your issue might be the timer. When you sent your ballast back to IceCap they probably upgraded it. The used one that blew was probably factory spec. I would toss the timer and plug the next one into a grounded outlet. You may have damaged your ballast as well so the issue may not go away. Send the blown ballast to IceCap for repair and upgrade. Then swap it out with your old ballast but on a new grounded timer and see if that solves your problem.

Also make sure that if you used any staples to attach wires to your canopy that one of them hasnt cut into the wire over time.

 

[Roblox84]

Wow I didn't know an ungrounded plug would cause me all this headache. I wish I would have known that months ago.