Freak incident/accident

[SLUF681]

WhileI at work last night, my wife called me at 3am. She said she heard some loud "Pops" and then smelled something "Electrical". Reef keeping is my hobby, not hers, so I had to walk her thru the process of checking components one by one. She thought initially it was the Little Giant return pump on my 120. Nope. After checking everything, all was good. I had her checka few other tthings around the house and nothing was found. Also note that I am a surge protector nut.

When I got home from work at 7:30, the burnt electrical smell was overbearing. I frantically went around the house looking for the source. And then I found it... I had totally forgotten about my 40 breeder! It wasn't running! I opened the stand to find my surge protector/power strip had black soot all over it. My return line had sprung a leak and shot saltwater directly into the strip. The surge protector tripped, but the water got onto the "Power In" side of the surge protector. It had melted the plastic housing of the strip.

The lesson learned from this, make sure you have a GFCI outlet IN THE WALL WHERE YOUR AQUARIUM POWER COMES FROM! It didn't trip the breaker, yet it got hot enough to melt the strip. Thankfully, I still have a house.

 

[CoryC]

Yessir. You got super lucky. I use portable 6 plug gfci blocks in all my outlets. You never know.

 

[Engloid]

If that circuit already has a GFCI further "upstream" towards the breaker box, I've heard it can be problems....one kicks off the other one. You onlly need one GFCI per circuit. In other words, if you have 6 outlets in series, from the breaker box, only the first one needs GFCI, and it will protect all the other 5. That's why sometimes in bathrooms and kitchens, you don't see all the outlets being GFCI's.

Scott (Runner) should know more about this, being an electrical guy. That said...yes, good point you're making. I need to look into mine, since I'd bet it's not on a GFCI. I recently had a powerhead that got the cord cut right at the water level and it was sizzling as it shorted out. I never figured out what it was that messed up the cord. In a way, I'm glad I didn't have a GFCI though, cause if I did, it would have shut off my tank, and last time my tank went 6hrs without power, I lost about $500 in fish. Guess I should look into a GFCI to protect some things, but not all.

 

[SLUF681]

Yeah Spencer, the only part of the circuit that was protected was the surge protection built into the power strip. Once it shorted the whole strip out, it obviously made it to the incoming cord. I didn't get it fixed today, but I'm going to home depot tomorrow.

 

[vtecintegra]

I finally had enough with these type of problems under the stand. Hose came off the return pump one time spraying water and cost me 2 MP40 power supplies and one of the controllers-breaker tripped. It could have been worse since my reefkeeper power strips were under there also (11 different things plugged in). I now have a small cabinet (nightstand) next to the tank now with all of the electrical stuff mounted in it. The only thing that can fry under the stand is my LEDs for an ATS. Much more easy to work on also when I need to unplug or move things.

 

[nitrox36]

I have read many stories on forums of people getting everything set up and some water taking out a crap load of expensive equipment all in one bang. That would suck, Sluf your lucky man.