lando
Aquarium Advice Addict
Well...it appears that "Murphy's Law" is alive and kicking. Just two days after posting (on this site) that my Odyssea MH/CF fixture has run flawlessly for over two years I now stand corrected.
The story...We were over at our neighbor's house last night for a bomb fire and some Friday night cocktails. My wife ran home to get something for our son (thank goodness), came back over and said there was a strange smell in the house and asked that I go investigate. I went home and was immediately met with the faint smell of burning plastic and chemicals...Kind of an electrical fire smell. I searched the up stairs and found nothing some I proceeded downstairs (where my large reef is located). Our basement was full of a smokey haze and the burning plastic smell was strong. I immediately thought of my light fixture over my tank and shut it off. I called my neighbor over, who is a firefighter in the city we live in, and we searched the house but could not find the source. We called 911 and the fire department responded with a thermo-imaging unit to search the inside of the walls and electronics for hot spots. Sure enough, when they scanned the external ballast box that drives the MH on the tank, it glowed a bright red. Even after the fixture had been off for several minutes. I think we found the source. I took the ballast box apart and this is what I found...