Metal Halide problems, please help.

[Fatboy Stinger]

So it came time for me to replace my 250w Metal Halide bulbs on my Odysea combo light fixture. I went to the store and bought the bulbs (20k's to reblace my now 15k's) and pluged them in. To my surprize, they would not fire. So I returned them because I thought I got bad bulbs and got a new pair of Coralife 250w 20k's. Again, these bulbs would not fire. Has anyone else had this issue? The thing is, when I put my old bulbs back in, they work just fine.

 

[faze07hd]

It might sound like a stupid question, but Are you sure the bulbs are the correct wattage?

 

[Fatboy Stinger]

Yep. 250w it says right on the bulbs.

 

[spinoleo]

are the old ones the same brand as the new ones?

 

[Fatboy Stinger]

No. The old ones are odyssea and the new ones are coralife.

 

[spinoleo]

are the ballast magnetic or electronic

 

[toddmh]

are the ballast magnetic or electronic

This matters with most bulbs ..

 

[Fatboy Stinger]

I'm not sure if they are magnetic or electronic. There are no labels on them to let me know. All I know is that they are the stock odyssea ones that came with the light.

 

[dadoftwins]

I had a problem like this and had to take apart the casing of my ballast ..Come to find out the bulb that it was running was a larger rating .It was a 175mh ballast and i was running 250mh bulb in it ..it was weird because the old 250 bulb that was in it ran but when i used a new 250 it wouldn't start.replaced it with 175 bulb and worked great.good luck-
hope this helps

 

[solRNY]

i am too using a odyssea fixture, if your is like mines then it probably has a electronic ballast, you be surprised when you hook it up with a wattmeter, i found mines to draw about 140w (if I remember correctly) and it suppose to draw 250w. read somewhere that you can change out a part in thr ballast and have it work as advertise, to power 250w bulb. i ended up replacing the the tin can with a lumatek 250w ballast, more safer this way.

 

[tmz]

A yer ior two ago there were quite a few reports by folks having trouble with Odyssea MH ballasts. You may be able to find some specifics on modifications via a search of the equipment /lighting forum.

 

[Dave VG]

i ended up replacing the the tin can with a lumatek 250w ballast, more safer this way.

I did this as well. You will be very surprised at how much brighter the lumatek ballasts are. When I got the lumatek ballasts I hooked one up to one side and left the Odyssea hooked up on the other. About a 50% increase visually with no doubt. Very yellow on the Odyssea side and very crisp and white on the lumatek side. It was so noticeable that after hooking both up the first night my wife commented as to why the lights seemed so much brighter. Wish I had a par meter would have been interesting to see the difference in numbers. There are many threads here on RC on the Odyssea fixtures. There is a fix out there to bring the Odyssea ballasts up to speck if you want to go that route.

 

[spinoleo]

pm sent

 

[Dave VG]

Oh and Odyssea's ballasts are electronic.