Ballast, Hood, Or Light bulb problem?

So I bought 2 1000 watt ballast, hood, light bulb sets.

We'll call them A and B.

A's HPS light burnt out after like 2 weeks.

Put B's light in.

Just the other day, I switched out A's Hood, for B's Hood. (Hood B was capable of resting on top of the tent frame, my plants got too tall... lol)


The Lightbulb seemed dimmer than usual. The bulb appeared slightly cloudy, and a slight black spot, but i couldn't remember if that was there already... I checked the ballast, and it was hotter than usual.

I decided maybe I should do Ballast B, with Hood B (A and B are the same company though, both 1000 watt designs)

The Lightbulb's insides fell apart. I then proceeded to put my MH bulb from A's set up in, since both of my HPS bulbs were now dead.

Everything is working fine.

My question is, did I just get bad luck with the bulb, or could Hood B have an issue with High Pressure Sodium bulbs but work perfectly with MH?

Are the ballasts hps and mh compatible?
Sounds like their just mh ballasts

you should call them by their name and model number instead of a and b. The more details you give the better response you'll get.

If you are running the hortilux bulb with digi ballast that could also be your problem. I cant run horitlux bulbs with my digital ballas r as I blow them up in 2 months tops. I run digilux bulb and have no problems. Also is your hoods air cooled of so are you cooling them. Whats the makes of your equipment

anzohaze said:

If you are running the hortilux bulb with digi ballast that could also be your problem. I cant run horitlux bulbs with my digital ballas r as I blow them up in 2 months tops. I run digilux bulb and have no problems

Click to expand...

Hortilux lamps(at least the super hps) are e-ballast compatible now, even before the box stated this I had no problem running them in a 1kw welthink digital ballast.

If the brand is ipower I just read a thread about a guy who bought 3 I think. he rma'd one for a problem and got a newer model. He said he knew instantly that the light was much more intense with the new model . what it comes down to is you get what you pay for. Don't skimp on ballast or lamp.
You may think your system works just fine by looking at the light glowing from it but there are details that determine the quality of light your components will put out. These details can't really be seen with the naked eye.
My guess is he is not running hortilux lamps.

I'm gonna hope for bad lightbulbs.

Both systems are Apollo Brand (which most likely uses the same company to make the ballast as IPower cause they look almost identical, but Apollo is Purple).

They are both suppose to be dual light capable systems (MH/HPS), I didn't even know I wasn't getting the same model, but I bought one form Amazon, and one from Ebay.

The Amazon purchase came with both types of light bulbs, and the Ebay Purchase only came with HPS light. So both were definitely suppose to be able to handle a HPS light.
The HPS bulbs that came with each purchase were EXACTLY the same model.

Both ran for almost the exactly same price, so hopefully one ballast wasn't too out dated... lol.

I did some more googling, and the Starters are in the ballast, not the Hood, so the Hood change shouldn't be a problem I'm starting to think. I read that a bad starter can cause your ballast to over heat, but now I'm wondering if the Lightbulb was just bad and was failing to start, and causing the same problem. I still haven't tested Ballast A to see if it still works though. I'm really hoping it does.

The Ebay guy has agreed to send me a replacement bulb, but before he did that, I went ahead and bought two bulbs from IPower, figured I probably shouldn't get another Apollo bulb. Like i said though I wouldn't be surprised if these 2 companies are using the exact same production companies, and just slapping on different name tags. I just shot the amazon guy an email, but I bought that stuff back in November so IDK what will come of that.

Thanks for fast replies, I guess I won't know the answer for sure until the stuff arrives and I test it out. Was just having a bad couple of days watching my 2 lights fail. When you backup fails faster than the original its pretty disheartening lol.