HPS won't ignite

As the title says it appears my HPS bulb won't ignite. All I see is a blue light with what looks to be something arcing in the arc tube. One end is orange and the other end is not lit, in the middle is the blue light that appears to be arcing in there.

I've swapped it out in the mean time for my MH conversion bulb.

My plants missed out on about an h our of light. I've set the timer back an hour to compensate for the time missed.

Do you think this is going to freak my plants out. I'm more concerned about the HPS being dimly lit from the arcing than I am about losing the 1 hour of time or switching to MH.

Also does this sound like a bad bulb or did it fail to ignite and just needs to cool down (though hps bulbs can be turned back on after like a minute of being turned off I thought.)

Thanks any insight would be great

if it didnt turn back on i would try and get a new bulb first. its not goin to hurt your plants having a different light for a day.

having light problems i would not change the time on the lights. keep em the same. it will hurt the plants more if you change starting times by .5-1hr(doing it multiple times)

good luck

Quote:

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Originally Posted by texas grass

if it didnt turn back on i would try and get a new bulb first. its not goin to hurt your plants having a different light for a day.

having light problems i would not change the time on the lights. keep em the same. it will hurt the plants more if you change starting times by .5-1hr(doing it multiple times)

good luck

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What he ^^^ said. :)

Also, check your bulb... there are bulbs that are designed to be hung vertical. And if you hang them horizontally, they will self-damage themselves.

:)

i had that problem, was the ignitor that didnt match the ballast

If all else fails, give the light an extra few minutes before trying to re-fire it. Can sometimes take 5-10 minutes.

it was definitely the bulb. I called the place I ordered it from and they are sending me a replacement w/ no questions asked.

In the mean time I went to the local grow shop and picked up a Philips/GE LU400. Rated at 45k Lumens and color temperature is 2100K.

The bulb I had was a high output bulb with 55k Lumens.

The only thing I'm unsure of is the color spectrum, seems that the 2100K would be really red.

In the mean time this will make a great back up bulb and it was only 20 bucks locally.

...

One of my 400 w HPS has the same problem, only mine does it more often. I'm not sure it's the bulbs. probably once a month i come down at 8pm (lights on) to find it sitting there sparking but not igniting. I have 3 bulbs that i've been rotating and as soon as i put a 'new' bulb in it fires right up. The bulb i take out is set aside for the next time i need to swap. I should mention that all three of those bulbs are HTG brand bulbs. The agromax bulb that i have in my other 400 w light has never given me a lick of trouble. So i dunno if it's the bulb brand or a bad ballast or what. I'd try a different brand of bulb but HTG keeps sending me replacements!!!

dunno if that helped you at all...but thought i'd share my frustrations.
thanks
Skeet

I had the same problem when I got my 400w it was a BLV son-t It worked for a day then the next day it just sort of flickered blue-ey purple took it back to the growshop next day and the guy in the growshop said it very rarely happens.