Reminder: Electricity & corals = BAD!!

[reedman]

Well, polyps are out this morning a bit more...still not like normal...color is very pail.

I've cut my photoperiod and increased feeding a bit while skimming the crap out of the tank. My hope is that the corals reincorporate the zooxanthelli soon and resume their ability to use light as energy. We'll see.

Any other ideas of I can do to minimize the stress and allow recovery?

 

[liveforphysics]

I wish you the best. My tank that had the T5 drop into it while I was at work still isnt the same. Its had quite a series of massive waterchanges now, and it still melts the xenia tester chunks I try in it. Every last hermit crab and the shrimp all got wasted as well.

I sincerely hope your tank suffers no lasting effects like my poor little 30gal has. Thank god I keep doubles and tripples of all my coral species in the other tanks.

 

[gbr]

A GFCI would have tripped instantly when current went through the tank and not the sea swirl. You may want to consider replacing the tanks breaker with a GFCI breaker. The draw back is that the GFCI would trip on any future fault and your tank would go without power until you corrected the problem, which when you are gone is bad as well. No need for a grounding probe on a GFCI circuit, however without a GFCI, a grounding probe could help. Most people would put it in the sump where it would have done you little good.

 

[reedman]

I have never had any luck with GFCIs. I wholeheartedely recommend them to people, but everytime I try them I end up blowing the GFCI when I plug things in. I've tried this multiple times with multiple different outlets. Without them...no problem (as long as I secure things so they don't drop in the tank).

As I said though...I do recommend them to others as a safety precaution. And yeah, it might have saved me this trouble, but a blown GFCI on the first day of a 7 day trip out of town would be just as (if not more) devastating. I guess I just pick my poison.

Thanks for the input though.

 

[gbr]

I am right there with you. Just letting others know that a GFCI would work for this case. Mine blew all of the time as well...leaving me without the return pump for however long it was while I was at work... I took them back out and am also without GFCI. But what that is telling us is that current is leaking to ground. If it is leaking, you have to ask if it is leaking through your tank or harmlessly to a case ground on a pump. Did you ever research which component was causing the GFCI to trip? I believe mine was the return pump (or one of the 2 pumps on that circuit).

 

[reedman]

Great points. No I never investigated further. I try not to mess with electricity any more than I have to. It hurts too much when you don't know what you are doing

I guess I was just looking at it as I saw no negative effects on the tank and that tends to be the best assessment in my experience.

 

[gbr]

Hopefully you don't mind my input. Just want to make sure you know that if a GFCI trips there is a problem and it might not hurt your tank, but it could kill you. Like I said, probably a pump case ground, and as long as the house ground stays intact, you will be fine. But if for some reason that circuit loses its ground and you touch the pump case...you will be the ground. If you want to pursue it further, you can buy a GFCI extension cord somewhere like Home Depot and systematically plug devices in to it to see which is grounding. You might find that it is a heater or worse yet, something in the tank like a sea swirl.

I know...pot calling the kettle black, just want you to be safe.

 

[LakeEd]

Its also helpful NOT to just turn off a timer, when working on a lighting circuit... then comming back the next day to finish the work, only to find that the power is now on again. *evil grin*

 

[reedman]

Very happy to get the input...very helpful actually,since I was thinking you wanted me to get out a meter and start testing. Fault testing like you are describing is very doable and a smart thing for me to do. THANK YOU!

Hopefully you don't mind my input. Just want to make sure you know that if a GFCI trips there is a problem and it might not hurt your tank, but it could kill you. Like I said, probably a pump case ground, and as long as the house ground stays intact, you will be fine. But if for some reason that circuit loses its ground and you touch the pump case...you will be the ground. If you want to pursue it further, you can buy a GFCI extension cord somewhere like Home Depot and systematically plug devices in to it to see which is grounding. You might find that it is a heater or worse yet, something in the tank like a sea swirl.

I know...pot calling the kettle black, just want you to be safe.

 

[wrightme43]

I may be very wrong here, I have been before, and will be again.
Just in my mind, I think a grounding probe is a very dangerous addition to a tank.
I really dont think I want the water in my tank, with my hands in it, be a direct path to ground. Just dont seem safe to me.

Sorry about what happened Reed. I checked my seaswirl thinking about it. All good here, SpaFlex and its clamped, and the swirl is clamped.

 

[Krish]

Sorry to hear that Reed...Bummer! Hope all works out for ya!

 

[Boomer]

THAT SUCKS REED. A GFIC should dumped it out, with no loss

 

[Slickdonkey]

After moving our freshwater tank a few weeks ago, I decided to plug everything into one of those GFCI extensions, since the outlet itself wasn't protected. It seemed to randomly trip every few hours; luckily I was around to notice it. So, I just got rid of it.

But it makes me wonder whether the device itself is unreliable or whether something is actually leaking current. I guess a way to test it would be to just put each piece of equipment on it and see which one is causing the problem, the same as recommended above for a regular outlet.

 

[reedman]

Update time:

It looks good at this point. I think all of the corals still have polyps and color is coming back ever so slowly. Still looks like a pastel painting in the tank (much like the early zeovit tanks looked), but I haven't noted any losses yet.

Fish aren't showing any signs of stress, shrimp is fine, snails all still there. Skimmer has finally calmed down a bit.

Interesting one for you all with OPR meters. I use it for monitoring changes in the tank so I don't completely trust the reading itself, but just the changes in the reading. My ORP was pretty consistent at 340 or so before the electricity incident. After that it dropped to 200. Slowly climbed back up to 300 as of last night. Even with several water changes over the last 4 days it was a slow climb, but seems to be getting back to "normal".