Just a word of warning for all you reefers who use the coralife power center strips. My brother in law suffered a HUGE loss on Saturday when the coralife power strip caught on fire under the tank and caused his 90g reef tank to burst. Nearly burned his house down, lost a boat load of livestock and caused a HUGE mess. The power strip was in a location where it could not have gotten wet, nor overloaded. It was around 10 a.m. and he was in Huntington picking his dad up from the VA hospital. His son called him to tell him his tank had caught fire and busted. The fire alarms woke the son up and by the time he got in there he couldn't see where the fire was occurring. He called 911 and about the time he hung up with them the tank busted and put the fire out. I wasn't able to get there till late that evening as I was trying to meet up with sixliner about some lights in Charleston. Anyhow, almost all of his fish died, because they were either crushed by the rock when the tank exploded or they dried out because they could not be found after the occurrence. Fortunately for my BIL, I had my reef tank established and we moved the corals all to my 150g so most of his corals are okay, but quite a few of them didn't make it. But had the tank not busted his whole house would have burned down. After doing some further research it appears this is a pretty common occurrence with these coralife power strips. So a word of advice is to toss the CL power strips and make sure you have a GFCI on your system.
Catastrophic fire - huge loss - Coralife power strip
- Thread starter jmccown
- Start date
spinnerbayt
New member
WOW! Thats a shame but at least everyone is ok, and the house didn't go down with the tank.
carb850
New member
Oh man, I hate to hear that. I have heard several stories of near fires (various reasons) and catastrophic floods in the house due to equipment malfunctions. It sounds as if we cannot have too many backup safety plans/devices in place to protect us.
I'm sort of thinking about a drain in my hardwood floor. I hate the thought of installing anything like that, but then again it might be worth the time and effort if it might save the rest of the floors in my home.
I'm sort of thinking about a drain in my hardwood floor. I hate the thought of installing anything like that, but then again it might be worth the time and effort if it might save the rest of the floors in my home.
coralreefer
No Pistons
How horrible but thank goodness it wasn't worse.
Unfortunately like you discovered this does seem to be a common occurrence with the coralife power strips.
Unfortunately like you discovered this does seem to be a common occurrence with the coralife power strips.
jmcown
I am a private fire investigator presently investigating a house fire where a coralife timer caused the fire. I am interested in learning more about your fire. Would you please contact me at gmihalek@certified-investigations.com
Thanks,
Gary
