Hello all, nice to see you have a forum!  Yay!  
 
I have never actually joined the MAS since I work on the nights you have your meetings, but I try to make it to the annual auctions.  I've recently had to cut back on tanks so just have a few puffer species, so probalby no more auctions for me anymore *sigh*  The days of 20+ tanks are long gone.. but my water changes go much faster now, hehe
 
Anyways, I am really looking forward to the ACA Convention in July!  I've got to get my cichlid fix somehow
 
I was wondering,  is there anyone in the area that is using 65w CF bulbs (straight pin), that would allow me to bring over my fixture and stick two of your bulbs into it to see if its working?
 
My 48" Coralife fixture went flakey on me, turns itself off and on.. the bulbs are old but I wasn't growing  anything in that tank other than coraline algae so I wasn't too worried about replacing them.  Coralife says I need to replace the bulbs and that should fix the issue.. but I hate to drop the $$ on a few replacement bulbs just to find out it was the ballast or something like that.. because if I need to replace the fixture, I will be going either T5 or LED, so I won't be able to use the bulbs I just bought.. make sense?  My other CF fixture uses the 55w ones, so it won't work for testing.
 
So throwing this out there, if there's anyone in the Watertown, Oconomowoc, Hartford, etc area that would go for this, let me know, I'd really appreciate you taking the few minutes to let me test it out!  Otherwise I'll see if I can get one of the stores to test it for me or something.

Well, you are the second person (in addition to the reps) that said they do think it is the bulbs, so I'll probably just bite the bullet and order some new bulbs then.  Thank you!

Sorry to hear that myaj.  
 
On a side note - I just wanted to say Hi and welcome to the forum. I'm also in the Watertown area.
 
Dan

I really need to check this more often!
 
Obviously I didn't make it to any meetings (what is MAAH?).  I keep going back and forth as to what is the best option here.
 
I can return the bulbs, and just get the LED fixture I was looking at.. or try to replace the ballast and HOPE that fixes this issue, just like I hoped the new bulbs would fix it! *sigh*
 
And thanks for the welcome guys!  Wish I had more online time to spend here

Thanks Andy.
 
I can't make any of the Friday meetings (I work nights) and I bought a new LED light for the tank.  Still making up my mind as to what I'm going to do about the Coralife fixture though.  I really don't have the time to tear it apart and put it back together so it will probably go back into storage.