Uh oh...

Bifferwine

I am a girl
Ummmmm so this morning, one of my ballasts started smoking... I think I know what it was, I mopped the floor and probably splashed some mop water on it, and I bet some mop water got inside. I turned it off, so now I have no actinics and only half of my tank is lit. What do I do?
 
Well, it's already unplugged, so take the case off and see if you can get it dried out inside. Maybe use some paper towels and a hair drier.

See if you can find what started smoking. Maybe just a burnt wire. Easy to fix. Take some pics of the guts and maybe we can talk you through putting it back together.
 
It is important. But I was up all night. And my corals won't wither away if they have to wait a few hours to get light. As long as it's not going to catch on fire, then I'm getting some zzzzz's in!

Besides, I'm up now. And i just unplugged everything and got my screwdriver out. I'm ready to do some ballast dismantling.
 
I opened up my ballast. I had to unscrew like 400 screws.

Then I discovered the true culprit of the smoke. Apparently, one of my dogs got mad at me this morning and decided to take a whiz on the $1300 tank lights. Yep, the ballast was filled with dog pee. All the components were soaked. I had to unscrew all the components off the base, and I've sprayed everything down with a very dilute ammonia solution and wiped everything down. But now my ballast looks like this, and I can't figure out how to put it back together :(

120107003.jpg


I have a friend who's an electrical engineer. Is it time to call for backup??
 
Hmm...I'd help you out if I were there, but in my absence I'd call your buddy.

And actually, when I do stuff like that I just play with it for hours until it works again. I don't know how those things work, having never used them and never taken one apart, but I'd guess there's a fuse or fuses in there somewhere. Check those for shorts, first. That could be a very simple solution to the problem.

(Happens all the time with cars, with which I am somewhat more familiar).
 
I believe I'd be kicking a dog out to the curb,( target practice ).
Biff,Mkae sure you dont have coils melted in those transformers.Could be bad news if they are.
 
You'll have to look at the coils close.Look for any place that might be burnt,or looks like its been to hot.

Thats a lucky dog too.Hes lucky he didnt get the piss knocked out of em.
 
What do the coils look like? How can I tell which part is a coil?

I'M SO LOST!!!!!!

I don't blame the dog. I mean, he chose a really awful place to pee. But I wasn't able to come home last night and was gone for almost 15 hours straight. So I blame myself. But if he had to pee so bad, out of all the places to go, he couldn't have taken a piss on the table leg or the end tables (which would have been easy to clean), he had to pee IN the ballast?!?! WTF!!!
 
When I take something apart like that I take step by step pictures. This won't help now but maybe next time. Do warranties cover leaky dogs.
 
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