fishyuser63

one of my lights is buzzing like crazy! It's driving me nuts! Any suggestions? The light works fine. When I turn it on it flickers a few times then stays on. The other light works fine and silently. It's just a 18" flouresent tube. I just replaced the bulbs (thinking it would help) with flouragro bulbs and it still doing it...maybe worse? Anyway please help I can't take much more of this.....ahhhhh!

sirdarksol

Probably an issue in the connection. If you know enough to replace those, that might help.

Tavel

Try replacing the starter. It's the white thing that unscrews from the bottom. Take it to Radioshack and have someone there find you a match.

It should only be a few dollars.

Could also be the sockets as sirdarskol said...but those are harder to replace. Start with the starter.

If that doesn't work, then there's something wrong in the transformer and there's no easy way to fix that (unless you happen to be an electrician...)

04_si

looks like the electrician is king again

you pretty much hit the nail on the head though.

sirdarksol

Oh yeah, the starters. I'd forgotten about those (since I don't have them in my setup).

Tavel

*gasp* we meet again!

fishyuser63

[quote=Tavel;449354]Try replacing the starter. It's the white thing that unscrews from the bottom. Take it to Radioshack and have someone there find you a match.
QUOTE]

I will try that...hopefully it works. While I was messing around with the light I noticed that it doesn't make noise if it's turned 90 degrees on it's back(light facing me instead of facing down) but as soon as I turn it back it starts buzzing again. Does this help diagnose the problem at all?

sirdarksol

Combined with the fact that it's only one of the lights, I'm still leaning toward my original belief that there's a problem between pins and terminal, but go with the starter, first.

fishyuser63

Just to be clear, when I say one of my lights I mean that I have two 18" lights on my 55 gal. They are in separate housings and are plugged in separately. Hopefully it's not the pins and terminal (sounds expensive) because I don't know how to replace those. I will try the starter...thanks for all the advice

sirdarksol

Ah! Nevermind my statement, then. I was thinking it was two bulbs in a single unit.

Tavel

[quote=fishyuser63;449716]it's probably resonating against the lid and amplifying the sound. Dampening the sound would only (temporarily) cover up a symptom, better to go after the source.

sirdarksol

My thought is that turning it on its side is helping complete a connection somewhere (perhaps the starter fully settles into its socket). Hopefully it's not the ballast. That one is a pain to replace.

fishyuser63

I fixed it! I didn't get a chance to go get a starter yet, i was actually going to do that today. After eating my breakfast next to the loudest light on the face of the earth, I decided to just take the light apart to see what was going on. All I did was unscrew four screws and basically just screw them back in and now there's no noise! It's great. Hopefully this is a permanent solution. Thanks for all the suggestions.

04_si

good! must have been just vibrating!