My tank crashed today, Help

[senji]

i had a heater come exposed on Thursday and shattered then started sizzling thankful i caught it before i electrocuted my tank. im going titanium so this wont happen again.

 

[kpiotrowski]

wow nick thats crazy that it didn't pop a breaker. scary!

 

[Herefishyfishy]

i had a heater come exposed on Thursday and shattered then started sizzling thankful i caught it before i electrocuted my tank. im going titanium so this wont happen again.

Have to even watch the Ti heaters, the ends have popped off before

 

[dnjan]

I had a marineland MJ1200 that was sputtering in my tank I pulled it out cleaned it and then decided to test it to see if it was in fact the problem. I put it in a bucket of water and plugged it in. Nothing happened, I then wiggled the power wire at the top of the pump and then proceeded to get SHOCKED! So now that pump is in my trash can I can deduce that it was probably stray voltage from the MARINELAND MJ1200 that caused my crash.

Wouldn't a GFCI have caught that?

 

[vlangel]

Probably a GFCI would have caught it but they can present their own problems. They can trip over an event that is not significant and if they trip the only outlet that is running the tank then everything is shut off! We had one but disabled it because we couldn't risk it shutting off when we weren't home. I also always have a battery back up pump that automatically kicks on if the power goes off. One of my maintenance tanks I serviced had the power go off at 10pm and by 7am, 11 out of the 16 fish in it had died of oxygen deprivation. Now that family has a generator wired into the house but they even keep a battery back up in the display just in case.

 

[dnjan]

Some GFCI's can be a bit flakey - If I get one like that I replace it. Personally, I wouldn't put my hand in a tank that wasn't powered through a GFCI.

 

[james734]

Some GFCI's can be a bit flakey - If I get one like that I replace it. Personally, I wouldn't put my hand in a tank that wasn't powered through a GFCI.

all my stuff is on GFCI and have never had a problem with it. There's a reason why they're required for damp or wet locations. To protect you and anyone else in the area. Water and electricity is a bad combination.

 

[vlangel]

I hear you about water and electricity, especially salt water because its more conductive! I'm not telling anyone not to use one but its probably wise to have more than one circuit running the tank so a GFCI doesn't shut everything down or sure enough it'll trip when you are on vacation!

 

[dnjan]

I have a battery-powered air pump that come on when the power goes off. Wouldn't be good for a multi-day outage (no heater - just airstone), but great for the 1-day or less outages.

 

[vlangel]

I have a battery-powered air pump that come on when the power goes off. Wouldn't be good for a multi-day outage (no heater - just airstone), but great for the 1-day or less outages.

That's how my battery back up works too. It at least deals with the first critical area of concern during a power outage. I have a kerosene heater and fireplace to help with heat. Not ideal but probably get us by for a week if need be.

 

[ReefGeeker]

Any updates? Hows everything recovering? Hope all is well!

 

[Husker12181]

I actually have a couple of SPS that are coming back. I did lose about 75% of them but I am hoping that the ones that remained are stronger and more resiliant which will be good if I ever get to frag them. All my Xenia is gone ( I actually don't mind since they like to take over everything) The strangest thing I see is that the few mushrooms I had in there are huge now and the leather coral is looking better then before. Maybe the deep cleaning and the 50g water change was needed.

Anyone want some mushrooms? lol

 

[ReefGeeker]

I take a few if you are serious let me know!