What exactly happened to my MH bulb??

I have been running my brand new 250w metal halide conversion bulb for maybe a week 24/7 in a floralux 250w HPS fixture from HTGsupply. All of a sudden today, it burns out.. On the inside of the arc tube I can see all this green crusty stuff and a little bit of brown caked onto the glass, it looks burned on. The ballast was also buzzing (humming) when it happened. I may have leaned on the power cord but I'm not sure. When I tried to start it back up, the ballast was buzzing again. Temperatures and humidity were pretty high in the room today. I do not have any air cooling system on the light, I didnt think a 250w fixture would need it. It is possible that it got too hot? I put a HPS bulb in to replace it for now, and it seems to be working fine. Does this mean its burned out for good? I'm afraid to try to run it again, dont want it to explode

Cooling MH and HPS is more for the plants' benefit than for the light itself.. MH and HPS are used in commercial and industrial applications everywhere without cooling. The green and brown stuff inside is the metal halide, mine has them too so that's probably not why yours broke.. maybe just a shitty lamp?

jrk152 said:

Cooling MH and HPS is more for the plants' benefit than for the light itself.. MH and HPS are used in commercial and industrial applications everywhere without cooling. The green and brown stuff inside is the metal halide, mine has them too so that's probably not why yours broke.. maybe just a shitty lamp?

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Apparently its not even broken, I just didnt give it enough time to restart.. it works now. But one thing I never noticed.. do MH arc tubes always glow crazy red and yellow neon colors when you turn them on?

Mine doesn't go crazy colours.. maybe just a little yellow before it brightens up and goes whitish blue.

jrk152 said:

Mine doesn't go crazy colours.. maybe just a little yellow before it brightens up and goes whitish blue.

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Mine goes nuts... bright red, blue, orange.. all diff colors burning in there till it turns whitish/yellowish/blue.. takes a while too like 5 mins

Give us some info on your ballast:

Brand, type (electronic, digital, magnetic), and how long you have had it for.

Sounds to me like you may have a bad capacitor (spelling? Its late and I'm high).

Mine is just Blue, then White, then Bright, Lol. Its 1000W MH.
Dumb question, but is it a conversion bulb or ballast that runs both?
Beacuse if u r running a MH bulb through a HPS ballast, then u r going to get a crazy colour show going on.

XxNinjaxX said:

Mine is just Blue, then White, then Bright, Lol. Its 1000W MH.
Dumb question, but is it a conversion bulb or ballast that runs both?
Beacuse if u r running a MH bulb through a HPS ballast, then u r going to get a crazy colour show going on.

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Conversion bulb in a HPS ballast (S50?) the bulb says it works in an S50 ballast, and thats what mine is. It is working fine again.. but the arc tube glows all the different colors of the rainbow when it first starts up

Ya probably did step on the cord, causing power loss for a split second, which often might cause the bulb to re-start (safety feature) which entails some cooling off period.