wondering whats taking my babies so long to get going

[bluecoupe]

this is my first time trying this hobby so keep that in mind ,i bought a 600w lumatek and 600w hortilux bulb with air cooled shade,didnt even take the bulb out of its sleeve to look at it ,just used the sleeve to screw it in and that was that,move along 3weeks,last week or so they have been moving along very very slowly,kinda making me worry if something was wrong ,yesterday i noticed the light was really low for some reason but blew it off,today the light was very little ,so i looked under my shade to find this

its a 400w that came in a 600w box,fml

 

[hippydan]

Wow! That doesn't look good at all! At least it didn't blow up or burn your house down (not even sure if that's reasonably possible), hopefully it didn't do any permanent damage to the ballast. It's bad enough you got ripped of a bulb. In the end it could have been a lot worse, don't let it get you down. Better luck to you in the future, stay safe!

PS: I'll be more watchful when my order arrives this week. Thanks for sharing.

 

[bluecoupe]

double check ,they say what kinda bulb it is ,right on the bulb itself ,im def going back to the store i got it ,getting my 110$ back

 

[LittleAmsterdam]

Lights burn our like standard household lights. Never heard of them exploding and catching fire. Your light looks very small for a 600W and a 400W. It could be a 250W HPS....

Save yourself some power, light, and $$; Seedlings don't need that much light until the first week of flower. T5 are a good bulb to grow seedlings with and an array of them is even better of vegging or for your moms. HPS lights burn a lot of power and $$ if left on for 18+ hours a day.

 

[compost]

Might want to take your ballast with you so they can test it for free since this was there error. I accidentally flipped the switch on a flippable ballast before. Just from a few minutes of running the wrong way it didn't put out nearly enough light after that. I took the ballast in and they replaced something and it worked great again.