I'm not sure why the bulbs are burning out so often. Sometimes it can be from rough handling. In the past when I had glass tanks I used a combination of UTHs, ceramic heat emitters and a small (12") regular florescent bulb for light even though they do just fine with out it). I kept burning through glass bulbs and had a few lamps melt too (spent the $ to get all ceramic light fixtures after that scare). I ended up just ditching the whole idea of glass tanks years later and now I just keep them in rack systems.