Who has taken a stray voltage reading on their tank and what was the reading?

[eww]

I just decided to take some readings using a multi-meter on some of our tanks after feeling a little tingle in the garage tank. Surprisingly we have stray voltage in all of our tanks. The garage tank is reading ~14v, the 180 is reading 24v and the bedroom Solana is reading ~18v. I have discovered that almost every power head, heater & return pump, no matter how old or new are leaking some voltage into the tanks. I am assuming we want 0 readings but in this case that would tank many hundreds of dollars to replace all these components and fix this all at once. Is there a tolerable level of voltage in a tank? I am just over thinking this or is this a very immediate problem? Is simply installing a grounding probe sufficient?

I am curious if anyone has recently taken any readings on their tanks and what they are.

 

[trido]

Im not sure but believe I have read that the salt water moving past the probes will give you a false reading.

 

[eww]

So how do you take an accurate measurement with everything on?

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[trido]

Here is a quick link I found.

Identifying, Locating and Curing Stray Voltage in a Saltwater Aquarium

 

[Scooterman]

Normally stray voltage under 90VAC is harmless. Exactly how are you measuring this? From what I see your plenty fine, no worries, hope your using a GFCI? We have many subject discussions in Boomers forum, search stray voltage.

 

[eww]

Thanks Duane and Scooty. I am testing it exactly as the article you posted describes with the ground probe in the ground receptacle and the other probe in the water. I will search in Boomers forum in a bit and do some more reading. I'm glad to hear it marty not be as big a problem as I feared.

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[estanoche]

For your first question: Yes! I have done the same tests on my tank

What I found most interesting was that when testing in my tank, the powerheads in my display appeared to be putting off the most stray voltage (I played around and turned them off 1 by one)..... and next was my lighting

 

[user 2204]

FWIW I would think that all power heads and the such that do not have a grounded (3-prong) plug on them will infact put out some stray voltage into the water. I found something very similar with stray voltage that comes out of many televison sets, vcrs and cable boxes that put stray voltage of around 10v-54v AC into the coaxial cable line. This voltage of course is stopped from leaving the house because of the cable being grounded to the house ground.

Again, this in theory is mostly due to electrical current running through the netural wiring as a ground, since the power heads and such would most likely be a 2-prong device they do not use a grounded outlet like a 3-prong device and instaed use the neutral wiring as a way of grounding. Easiest way to find out what is introducing the stray voltage would be to unplug each device until you see the voltage drop. Then you will know which devices are putting voltage into the water.

Cheers,
Alex