So you know the saying, “things always happen to my tank when I go away”, well we went to NY for Christmas. Left on Thursday evening and returned last night, only to find that the equipment on my frag tank was not running and the temp was at 39 degrees. Needless to say that everything was either dying or already dead. Something had tripped the GFI outlet. Upon trying to reset the GFI, I unplugged everything and inserted each piece of equpment seperately, to discover that one of the heaters shorted out and tripped the GFI outlet.
Last night I started making some new water to do a big water change. I am hoping there will be some surviours. And on top of this, I caught a cold over the weekend.
Oh John that sucks - i’m sorry t hear that.
The heater in my wife’s tank went at some point in the last 2-3 days too. I found her yellow goby lying on the sand bed last night. When i put my hand in to get it out the water was outright COLD - checked the temp - 62 degrees.
Very sorry to hear John. Give me a call if you need any quick advice or assistance.
Heaters are the cheapest most unreliable piece of equipment in a reef tank and yet for us living at this latitude they are perhaps the most important. They caused many issues for me in the past. So glad I have a controller now, but even still I don’t buy cheap heaters and replace them frequently.
Bummer sorry to hear that!
I think best bet is to run multiple lower wattage heaters so you’re temps manage with a stuck on heater or loss of heater.
Of course if one heater trips the GFI than the others won’t help!
John please let us know if we can donate anything to get the frag tank growing again.
Thanks Craig. I am doing water changes and making new water for changes. I am thinking that maybe some of my mother colonies of zoos survived the mishap.
damn john, that is terrible, but at least it wasn’t the main tank, which is what i feared it said at first. best of luck.
Salt water is a poor conductor, keep the heaters off of the GFCI and just put a grounding probe in the water… It’ll never happen again.
I had my heater shatter in the tank, all of the glass at the bottom and nothing but metal coils in the water plugged into the wall and I had my arm in the tank all day and never “really” got shocked, that is the only time and the way I discovered the problem was when I touched the tank brace AND an air stone at the same time the current went through my hand and only felt like putting your tongue on a 9v battery.
Tim, salt water is an excellent conductor in comparison to regular water. It is not as good as metal, but plenty to cause you damage.
It’s always a good idea to have everything that has an electric cord running into your tank GFCI’ed. Maybe separate GFCI’ed outlets for a separate heater?
Thanks Paul. The heaters in the main tank are on seperate circuits, so something like this can not happen.
Tim, I believe Ian is correct, any water is an excellent conductor of electricity. The outlets in the room where I keep my frag tank are all on a GFI. This would not have been a problem if only the heater crapped out while I was not away from home.
Salt water is only a semi conductor, which means electricity disperses much faster through it than pure water. (this is why the entire ocean doesn’t die when lightning strikes in one place)
Electricity will always take the path of least resistance, always, so if you have a grounding probe in the tank and your arm in the tank and you are standing on wet steel the electricity in the tank will still go through the grounding probe.
Found this on google.
Does salt water conduct electricity?
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Yes. The saltier the water, the better the conductance. The reason it conducts electricity is because the NaCl (sodium chloride, aka table salt) breaks apart into a positively charged Na+ and a negatively charged Chlorine Cl-. When current is applied, it is easily conduced by the highly charged ions. Pure water is actually and extremely poor conductor, but saturated salt water is a very good one.
Sorry to hear John. I do what Ian does I run multiple 400 watt heaters just because I half to, in order to keep the temp up to 79-80.
I do keep everything on GFI but have the grounding prob as well.
Sorry about the cold I had one come up Christmas night (thanks to the wife) and still battling it.
I have a grounding probe in my main tank . But will the probe stop the GFI from tripping if something like a heater shorts out?
Thanks for the concern, and I hope you feel better too.
John which brand of heater were you using? Not to hijack the thread but can anyone recommend a relatively safe heater? I have been meaning to purchase a new heater considering mine is going on 2 years old. Sorry to hear about your situation, hope everything turns out for the best.
Just saw the thread, sorry John, it sucks. Hope you recover well.
[quote=“houndsbayman, post:14, topic:3665”]
I have a grounding probe in my main tank . But will the probe stop the GFI from tripping if something like a heater shorts out?
Thanks for the concern, and I hope you feel better too.[/quote]
GFCI’s monitor how much goes out and comes back to the outlet. If it “catches” less than it “throws” it trips.
A grounding probe sends loose voltage to an outlets ground separate of the GFCI, so it will trip it. Thats why I say put your heater on a regular outlet and put a titanium grounding probe in the sump right next to it. If it goes its a short distance to the ground and no current will affect your DT. Its not like you are going to keep a broken heater in the tank long anyway once you discover it!
the only real back up strategy is multiple heaters on multiple circuits. so if one heater fails, the other still works. Refer to the department of redundancy department for instructions. Its great it didnt affect the main tank. Im sure you still have most of the coral species in there. Take inventory, and if any were only in the frag tank and gone, perhaps some of us who have bought some frags can reseed your tank with a new frag. Thats the club backup plan. Spread them around.
Still, i dont use GFIs on my tanks, they are tempermental. i rely on the circuit breaker instead. I havent given it much thought as to ifthat is good practice, but never had a problem, even with bad heaters, the past 11 years.
Thanks everyone. I did not have a ground probe in the frag tank, which is in a different room than my DT. And all the outlets in that room are wired to a GFI.
I did have some zoo colonies in there that look like they may survive. But nothing that I don’t have in my DT.
The heater that shorted out was a stealth. I ordered 2 new 350w Via Aqua heaters from Petsolutions.com and will be getting them on Thursday. They were very quick to fill my order and shipped the same day. Great service.
I wish you leaved closer John, I have 5-6 laying around and would give you one.