Ballast Replacement Advice Red Sea 250

[MaeganWink]

One of the school tanks donated to me a few years ago was a Red Sea 250. The lights on it went out a couple of weeks ago and I assumed it was the bulbs...but I got new bulbs in today and nothing. The hood fans still run, as do the tiny moonlights. So I'm assuming it must be the ballasts...

 

Now I am NOT a light or equipment expert, far from it. Should I look into getting new ballasts and try replacing them? Is it something a beginner diy person can figure out? 

 

The tank does not have any coral or anemones or anything in it currently, so it is not something I have to rush to fix necessarily. 

[DaJMasta]

I do think ballasts are considered a regular replacement (more often than the fixture) sort of item even though you don't swap them nearly as often as bulbs, so it's probably the right direction to look.  Troubleshooting the ballast itself can be tricky because of the high voltage output, but in my limited experience a failing or failed one often makes a bunch of noise or lights flickering leading into the failure.  The other telltale thing would be if all the lights on a ballast fail together instead of individual tubes.

If you have a multimeter, you can unplug it and then check continuity between the two AC lines to make sure it's not a short (and between the outputs of the ballast), but odds are good a short would have brought down a breaker or at least the other parts of the hood, so I'd doubt this being the problem.