6060 Shorting Out

[Rook]

Hello,

I have a 6060 pump, a few years old. It seems to work fine and I really pushes the water great. The problem is that when I plug it in, it shorts out the system.

I have an Aquacontroller Jr. with two DC8's. I have all my equipment (2 halides, vho, return pump, heater, etc) plugged into the DC8's. When I plug the 6060 into the DC8's the GFCI wall outlet the DC8's are plugged into trips.

The odd thing is that if I put the 6060 into a 5 gallon bucket of water and plug it into a different outlet without any of the fish tax equipment, the 6060 appears to work fine. I have look it over and I cannot find a cut or crink in the wire. I let it run for several hours in a mix of water and vinegar and I'm sure it is fairly clean.

Any ideas?

 

[rvitko]

Does the 6060 work on the GFI by itself? If so I would assume the problem is one of the other pieces of equipment. The 6060 has a ground strap internally and it can happen that this grounds out another appliance leaking stray voltage because the plastic around it is graphite reinforced and acts as a weak conductor.

 

[Rook]

It works on other GFCI's in the bucket. I'll have to test if it works on the GFCI that the Tank uses when nothing else is plugged in.

Also, I only have the Tunze in the main tank (currently a modded maxijet until this is figured out), no other equipment. Only the return pump and a heater are in the sump/refugium, and the pH and temp probes. Otherwise I have the lights and a fan and the AC Jr. setup.

 

[rvitko]

Yes but stray voltage would travel through the entire saltwater circuit so even if the pump and heater are in the sump they would still produce stray current that could affect the pump. It could also be a peculiarity of the DC8's which are not something I am familiar with or it could just be the total load is too high and the pump is the straw that breaks the camels back.

 

[Rook]

Any proceedure for testing to figure out what, if anything is causing a short or overload?

 

[rvitko]

If you sent me the pump I could check it for stray voltage and current draw, but I can't check everything else. You can use a watt meter like the Kill O Watt to check your other appliances and make sure they are drawing the rated wattage.

 

[Rook]

I'll test it out this weekend. If I cannot get it to work; I'll send it out your way to test.