I was gonna use the BLB lamp to see if the plastic band around the pickle jar glowed. (It did, a very bright cyan color.) Then I saw the pickles glowing a faint red glow. So I took one out and put it near the lamp.
I tried the pickle juice ballast....lamp glowed EXTREMELY bright....and then lost vacuum! yeah...now I need to use the little spiral tubes for experiments now! I'll post a pic of what happened later! basically, there is a hole melted in one end of the glass!
Do you have voltmeter? Try measure the voltage drop on the light bulb as series with the fluorescent light. Then try to measure the voltage drop of the pickle juice in series with the light bulb. If the voltage drop is too little, then you might want to weaker pickle juice by adding more water. That will increase the resistance on the pickle juice. When you find the right voltage drop as the light bulb in series with the fluorescent light, then you can subsitutute the light bulb to fluorescent light. Good luck!
and that Pickle looks like something that starts with T!