I've been using the Galaxy ballast for the past 4 years. When I started the tank I had one of their dual ballasts that ran 2 halides at once. Figured it was a great idea. This way I only needed to plug in two ballasts. Unfortunately it didn't work out for me as that dual ballast had issues. I returned it within a week and just picked up two regular (Galaxy) ballasts to replace it. All three ballasts have been going strong for 4 years now. Have not had to replace or service any of them.

Keep in mind that this doesn't necessarily mean that they are the bees knees. The only other ballasts that I've run we're Current USA, and BlueWave. I hated how big and noisy those were.

From my understanding the vertex are a relabeled galaxy. It may be this particular ballast or the make in general.
I'm going to the lfs to get a different one and hopefully return this one

I ran a Vertex for a couple years with both Phoenix 14k and Ushio 10K DE lamps and I never had a problem with it. A year or so back I sold it and went to the current PFO HQI ballast so I could get the extra 10% or so out of my HQI lamps and was running that happily for a while. Then recently I picked up this other Vertex ballast when I was troubleshooting my fixture and it's only this last ballast that I've had issue with, so I don't believe there's a compatibility issue between the Vertex electronic ballast and these lamps, but simply that I've got a slightly defective unit, and possibly you do too. Either that or there are different generations of the ballast that I'm not aware of which run differently. Too bad you're so far removed, you can't just borrow a buddy's ballast to see how your lamps run. Good luck

Picked up a loner ballast from lfs and put a warranty request in.
I'm sure it's just a defective unit.
I don't believe there's much difference in the electronic ballast. No matter which brand