1 week no light...ballast blew up

So I bought a light kit from HID hut awhile ago but did not start using it until recently. It was a 400w digital ballast that worked 24 hrs a day for about 7 weeks when I was about to flip to 12/12 when I bumped it changing nutes and blew the internal fuse. I got new fuses & each one blew out again in seconds. For those who are not aware HID hut ballasts can only be used with HID hut reflectors & vice versa & I did not want to buy another ballast that blew out quickly so I ended up buying a new ballast & reflector to replace it but it took a few days.

The girls (some branches are now showing) were in the dark for a full 6 days & now look very sickly. Some leaves appear to be ok while others are severely withered and off color. Should I remove the withered leaves & let them veg longer in order to allow them to recover? What about the nutrients? Should I switch back? How long should I wait before I put them back to flower?

The ballast is no longer under warrantee but HID hut has offered a 10% discount to replace it which I may have to take advantage of so I will then have 2 light sets. This is my first dwc but this is the only real problem I've had so far. Ppms are around 600 & have been all week along with 6.0ph...not surprising they drank nothing but water during the entire 6 days in the dark. I added some more nuted water & put them on an 18hr cycle to encourage new growth. Any help or suggestions somebody could give would be greatly appreciated.

Since nobody seems to give a fuck anyway. I decided to update this post for the benefit of those who may run into a similar sitch. I have been lurking around RIU for months now & learned a wealth of info from others, which is why I feel compelled to share the story of my plight.
My plants were in the dark for about a week but when I turned on the new hps lamp it turned every leaf into a shriveled mess. I ended up trimming off just about all the leaves & figured they would all die.
I have 3 G13 pineapple express & 1 delicious cotton candy (all feminized) in a single 18 gal dwc rubbermaid bin. I realize now that it is better to use individual dwc buckets so that if there is a problem it might not affect the whole grow just one plant. I plan to do dwc buckets next time instead of a single bin. I am using a single 400w cooltube hps for flower & mh for veg. I am using technaflora nutes mostly because they were cheap.
To my amazement, I switched back to the mh on 18/6 & the plants slowly recovered over a period of 3 weeks. Some of the leaf tips were burnt so I've been trimming them off as they get big enough. Now all the leaves look healthy again. I put the hps bulb back in & flipped to 12/12. It's been 3 days of 12/12 & are now starting to preflower. More updates & before & after pics on the way....stay tuned

Oh and by the way I never did change back to the veg nutrients, I just kept with the flower cycle nutes. I wanted to see if it was a possible nute burn because I had just changed out to flower cycle right before tragedy struck. I was able to quickly aquire a new complete light set to replace the old one thay failed so as soon as I get another ballast I will have a backup and/or supplemental hid lamp.

Nice comeback. If it happens agan, I'd rig some cfl together in the interim.

You turned He's Gone into Sunshine Daydreams

a reflector is nothing more than a socket/cord and plug. How is it the reflectors don't work with other ballasts?

Normally all you have to do is cut the plug off or something similar.

Oh sure I could have just got a new ballast and rewired it but at the time it was faster to order a whole new lamp set. Besides the HID hut cool-tube is a piece of donkey shit. The reflector still works but HID hut wires its ballasts/reflectors with a m/f plug that resembles a PC power-supply connector which I will eventually rewire for a replacement ballast.

Here are some pics of the tragedy when it occured. The light was too close and the res water was a bit low which made this disaster much worse. The hps hides the discoloration apparent on all the leaves that you cant really make out from these pics. Updated pics coming soon...

Thanks, you are right I should have just hung a cheapo home depot cfl fixture in there until my new stuff arrived. At the time I thought it was so hopeless that I just kept loading the bong and crying in the darkness. I have learned much from these mistakes and will be better prepared for the next catastrophe should it hopefully never occur.

Here they are three weeks later, although next time I will put in the mh bulb for better pics

From he's gone to Sunshine daydream, indeed growindad! They are week 2 of preflower & still growing strong. I think the extreme defoliation has allowed the lower branches to fill out nicely. I may have to train the branches out a bit wider to avoid overcrowding the canopy/mold issues soon!

Update....Its day 23 of 12/12 and they are filling out nicely but the tops have stretched out due to lighttoocloseaphobia new pics coming soon

There seems to be no interest in what they look like now so why bother risking my ass uploading incriminating photos. Since nobody gives a fuck anyway I will just update by saying they are now in the final weeks of flowering and I have been checking trichs...all clear still. Maybe 3-5 weeks til finish

midnitetoak said:

There seems to be no interest in what they look like now so why bother risking my ass uploading incriminating photos. Since nobody gives a fuck anyway I will just update by saying they are now in the final weeks of flowering and I have been checking trichs...all clear still. Maybe 3-5 weeks til finish

Click to expand...

i think most people are in newbie central... and i would still invest in a quality ballast like soils tek or phantom

Yup looking at picking up a phantom for my next project which will be a rdwc with 2 400w mh/hps. I didn't post this at newb central cuz I dont really feel like a newb, even when.I make a newb mistakes. I got several soil grows under my belt...well in my lungs, anyway...but this was my first attempt at dwc. I don't see the point in sharing photos just to have closure of a thread nobody posts on. I wanted to show that if you do fuck up your plants sometimes with some tlc you can reverse a mishap & still end up with decent bud. Some people might have thrown them out & restarted from seed but persistance seems to be paying off. Maybe I will upload new pics if more heads show interest....