Help! Electical wiring woes

[Dapple2]

I just got up the nerve to retro-fit my Eclipse 6's with the AH Supply kits. The drilling and screwing stuff in part went fine (despite my fears of cracking the the plastic), but I seem to have messed up on the wiring. I thought I was following the diagram...

I have one red wire stuck into the one hole of the light sockets going to the power cord and one black wire stuck in the other from the ballast.

The ballasts each have one wire going to the light sockets and one going to the power cord.

Since there's three wires meeting (power cord, light socket, ballast) I put one of those blue cap thingies on. (On each side since there are two ballasts and sockets). I'm not sure if I did that part right, I just squooshed the three wires together and then sorta twisted the blue thingy on.

I just tried pugging it in and fipping the switch....nada...

Hopefully this is clear enough to understand, I'm wishing I could take pictures to show what I did... Anyone have any clue where I went wrong?

[OrionGirl]

Okay--let's see if I can put this down and be helpful.

Basic outline...Two lines from the light socket (one red, one black) should go into the ballast for each socket (ie, if you have 2 lights bubls, you'll have 4 wires, 2 red, 2 black). Then, the power cord goes straight into the ballast--it shouldn't go to the sockets directly.

If this is a 2 bulb ballast, you have to wire it for 2 bulbs--you can't use it to run just one. Like Christmas lights, the circuit is not completed if there's a light out/missing.

HTH

[Dapple2]

Thanks for the fast response!

Okay, more questions, the ballast only has two wires sticking out of it, so if I hook both of them up to a light sockeet, then how can I hook it up to the pwere cord too?

It just occured to me that I should post the pics that I'm using as my guidelines (d'oh!) so that this will be more clear. What I did looks like this: http://www.turetsky.org/nanoreef/Lights.jpg

I've been using the directions from their website (http://www.turetsky.org/nanoreef/) under the lighting section as well as the ones that came with the lighting kit.

[OrionGirl]

Okay--so you have one powercord--is it split like that? If so, make sure that you have both red lines together, and both black lines together. The two red lines should go on one line of the powercord, and the black ones on the other.

It looks like the sample pics have the 'hot' wire in the black--this is important. Normally, red lines are where the power flows in, but in the pics, the black lines are the powered lines. So--make sure that you have it set it up so the 'hot' lines are the ones going into the ballast. In the powercord, the 'hot' side is the one on the skinny side of the receptacle.

Can you take a picture of the whole thing, with all the pieces?

[Dapple2]

Yay! I got it! Thanks!

Actually, that pic came off the web page I linked too, I don't have a digital camera or else I would have posted my own pics ;).

I definately wasn't reading that diagram right! Thanks for the clear explaination!

[OrionGirl]

Glad to help--Thanks go to my boyfriend, as the answers came from him--I'm just the 'medium'. He does all the wiring and such for our tanks.