My 400watt MH burned out

This is my first grow.
My lights all flickered real fast. Clocks didn't even need reseting. So an hour later I checked my grow to find my MH bulb glowing a very dim blue.
I replaced it with my HPS but I only have a few days till harvest.
How long do these bulbs last?
I wonder did the bulb going out cause my lights to flicker throughout the house or did my power get interupted and caused the bulb to go bad?
I would say the bulb had about 7 or 8 weeks of 12 on and 12 off.
Thanks for any info.

usually you use the hps for the flowering, and these bulbs have really long life cycles, like over a year of 24/7 on..........

bml290 said:

My bad. It's the HPS that burned out and I put the MH in.

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Sounds like some kind of surge may have damaged your bulb to me.
In the future use a breaker to protect your lights.
As far as i know mh buds are slightly smaller but quite possibly stronger than hps buds.

I have no evidence of this fact so it may not be correct,but it seems to be what people are saying,so you can stop worrying about losing your weed because mh will flower them just fine.
If you were going for yield then you'll need to buy a new hps bulb

P.S. I was told to replace my bulb every 9 months for optimum efficiency.
Apparently some bulbs may last for well over 12 months but their quality of output is greatly reduced.

You should replace your MH every 12 months (for super) - 18 months and your HPS every 18-24 months (doesn't matter if they still look bright) - they loose a lot of lumens.

if you can afford it, keep spare bulbs handy for just such an emergency.

Buy a light meter, you can get one for $30. This will tell you what ur garden's footcandles are, and then you can make an intelligent choice about when to replace the lamp. The lifespan of HPS is way longer than a probe start metal halide. That's why I'm switching over the PULSE START METAL HALIDE for all of my vegetative growing requirements. Pulse start lamps don't need to be turned off periodically (for safety reasons), they start off brighter, and they have less lumen degradation. Get the pulse start ballast kit from businesslights.com, throw out the innards of ur existing ballast, and replace it with new innards, that cost $50 + shipping. They even have a really nice 850W Pulse Start metal halide for the big growers!

no one even thought to mention.... sheesh....

when a hot hid bulb loses power, it can't fire right back up; it has to cool down. try your bulb now

yea that and do you have a convertable ballast or did you throw a mh bulb in a hps thing? Im not sure if that could be part of the problem?

kayasgarden said:

yea that and do you have a convertable ballast or did you throw a mh bulb in a hps thing? Im not sure if that could be part of the problem?

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it's not; a hps ballast will ignite a mh bulb, but will shorten life. he's saying his hps was blue when he saw it. i'm thinking it just needed to be turned off for 15 mins, then reignited.

if not, you need a new bulb.

Thanks for the replies. I threw the bulb out already. I bought the ballast and both bulbs from HTG Supply and both bulbs work on the same ballest.
I'm leaning toward it was a power surge. I will definetly keep backups from now on.
BTW I'm still learning my bulbs, I seen the picture and it was my MH that blew not the HPS.

I had assumed that he had read the manual that states a 15 minute cool down time before the light can be properly relit