anyone have any ideas how to fix my 4X96W coralife PC light ?

[Snarkys]

I have been running a 4X96W PC coralife fixture for about a year and a half now. today I decided to move it downstairs and put it on a different tank and now it shorts out and triggers my GFI about half the time i turn it on and if it doesn't trigger the GFI when i turn it on it triggers it when i turn them off. i was turning them on and off with the powerbar they are connected to.

I figured it might be the power bar or GFI so i tried them on a totally different circuit and had the same results. next i opened it up to check if there were any burned wires or anything and didn't see any. I then unplugged all the bulbs and tried each bulb and each bulb shorted and triggered the GFI. there are two separate ballasts in the unit, each one runs two bulbs. Id understand if one failed but how can they both be working fine . i take the unit down stairs plug it in and now they are both shorting out....


can anyone help ?

*EDIT* i just realized that the plug in that it was plugged into upstairs doesn't have a GFI. but it wasn't triggering the circuit breaker.

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f96/snarkys/DSCF0312.jpg

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f96/snarkys/DSCF0311.jpg

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f96/snarkys/DSCF0310.jpg

[Snarkys]

OK so i plug it in upstairs again where there are no GFI's and it is fine not matter how many times i turn it off or on. Never blows the circuit breaker. go back down stairs and try any one of the four 20 amp circuits with GFI's and it blows right away. how unadvisable is it to just plug it into a circuit with no GFI. if there is a real problem with it the circuit breaker will catch it right ?

is there a way to fix it rather than throw it ?

[thisiscmd]

Extremely unadvisable.

A circuit breaker goes off whenever there is too high of a load drawing too much current. The breaker is there so that you don't heat up your wiring too much when drawing too many amps, usually more than 15 or 20 depending on the circuit.

A GFCI works in a totally different manner. It monitors the current going out of the hot lead and the current coming back on the neutral, and kicks the circuit open whenever there is a difference. This is because, whenever there is a difference, the current not coming back into the designated return is finding it's reference someplace else. This occurence is commonly referred to as shorting to ground.

Simply put, you probably have a short somewhere to ground. Somewhere in your lights, there is a conducting wire that is shorting to the casing or something else conductive which is grounded. You should very closely examine the lighting, unplugged, and see if you can find the problem. Do not just plug it into a normal outlet though, your GFCI is telling you there is a problem.