Chad

I saw two holocanthus worms with symbiotic emperor shrimp in a small LFS yesterday... That would make a cool species tank!

Vortechs will (I think always, but I might be wrong, I have an apex) require another part, for apex, that's the "WXM." Though tunze can be controlled by the apex if you have the interfacing wire (rj45 to din).

I wondered if the vent was being dual-purposed! I love it, nicely done

Nice progress, it's clean and pretty! Is the vent on the base of the stand because you put the tank over a HVAC vent in your home? If not, I'm curious, what's it for?

I agree with the above on all counts. It was probably the other anthias... though the second guess of midas blenny is a possible too, since they can be nippers and will swim with the anthias.

Normal process. When photosynthesis is going on, CO2 is used and O2 is released. More O2 and less CO2 in the water means pH goes up. When photosynthesis isn't going on, O2 is used and CO2 is released. More CO2 and less O2 in the water means pH goes down.

Can you provide a link to this one? I couldn't find it... Thanks!

I really love that place... Very cool things being done and a fish/coral geek's historical gold mine.

My experience is that a nassarius snail will eat anything that is dead or almost dead, but will not kill something - especially not something fast moving like a shrimp can be.

Well, I pulled the ignitor and tried it... Unfortunately, that didn't work. Oh well replacing parts it is!

OK. Thanks for the feedback! I'll see what else I can find... I really would like this back up tonight! John, I'd love to finish it up, the really sad thing about it is how close it really is... At this point it's more a likely the process of digging everything out of the boxes, setting it back up and figuring out where I was will likely take longer than finishing it!

Grainger tells me part 3A534 is "close," (it's for a High Pressure Sodium, Lamp Watts 150 to 400) but I'm not sure if a $78 bet on an unreturnable part that isn't specifically what I was looking for is good. What do y'all think? (It's certainly less than the ~200 for the ballast that I'd use to cannibalize and update my existing equipment).

So, it's definitely not the lamp... I borrowed a fixture with another bulb and my fairly new one fired on it and the borrowed one didn't fire using my ballast. Unfortunately, I ended up working later than the grainger was open, so I was unable to get a new part. My wife says she'll head out tomorrow. Hah, this heads into the weekend and I might shift to frantically finishing my languishing LED project.

Tom, I wholly agree with you! The broad experience base, expertise in a wide array of topics, and willingness to share is great. David, thanks, I'm going to swing by grainger tonight and see if I can locate one.

(ahh, broken knowledge ) You gotta love how a ballast that comes from the manufacturer isn't the one recommended. OK, so the ballast is the transformer, cap, and ignitor? Should I just suck it up and replace the ballast parts? Thanks for your help, David.

LOL... yea, I noticed that... I suppose it's good I only got 5 volts... my meter is only good for 1kv!

Huh. Another reason to despise this coralife pos. I'm pulling half old knowledge that's probably broken, but the M80 is the full ballast (for high current bulbs), correct? As long as I have this thing apart, I'd really like to fix it the way it should be fixed. If the ignitor isn't the right one, I want to fix that. I'll see if I can find a bulb for tomorrow to test the fixture, though.

It's a DE, HQI lamp. Sorry about that... It's a 250 HQI. The fixture was originally a coralife and the ballast still is. Here's a pic of the ignitor, transformer, and cap... I went looking for the ignitor (and found it shoved in the corner of the fixture) when I saw it on the schematic.

LOL. I'm driving myself nuts, sorry! Now I'm not so sure it's the lamp. I'm only generating 5 Vac across the lamp when it starts up. I had bad contacts to get into the cap leads, so it's actually zero when off / 140 Vac when on. As far as I can tell, that's what I'm looking for. How's this ignitor supposed to work?

OK, I think it's the lamp. The cap charges and discharges like I think it should after staring at the schematic and turning it on and off... That sucks, it's a practically new (only a couple weeks) old! grrr.

Thank you, Jenn, I greatly appreciate it, but I will see if I can find one... I'll likely be able to. David, I'll try taking the cap out.

Taking voltage across the cap is 0 when off and ~23 when on. The transformer lightly hums when on. Thanks, I have a grainger near me that I'll visit tomorrow for the cap and see if someone locally has a lamp I can try.

So, I guess staring at this remarkably simple device, I guess it's either the cap or the lamp. Anyone know a consistent local source for a large cap?

Nothing visually obvious in the ballast... Interestingly, yesterday was the first day the lamp didn't come on. But looking at the graph of amperage, Sunday used 0.5 amps more than previous (3 amps for the ballast instead of 2.5 amps) and not the ballast pulls 1.25 amps when on. Odd.

The bulb is only a couple weeks old, is getting power (fan powered directly from the bulb contacts turns on), does not flicker. One day it turned on, the next it didn't. The bulb looks good, but unfortunately I don't have a backup to try it with... I'll take it apart and inspect the capacitor. Thanks, y'all!