Elctricity and a reef...not good!

Blugobi

Blugobi

New member
Ok..came home from work and found that my 10 lite LED night light (home made) had slipped in the tank and to make long story short( no pun intended). My system got about 6VDC /1200Mha for about 5 hours of this current. Most of my sps are not looking happy, all polyps are withdrawn. A few have some polyps out, but not fully extended. My GSP is totally withdrawn, some of my zoos are open while others are closed.....My large encrusting monti went from Sage green to almost Teal. My large Green slimmer went from Green to very..very..very light green. The only coral that looks fine is my Hydronaphora. Nothing looks dead, but definatly not happy. All my fish are fine as well as all the snails and hermits. Anyone here have any experience, with electricity and corals? I'll let you know how things look in a few days.

GR
 
thats nothing I put my hand in mine last night and got a good jolt droped a DVOM in the water and am at 38volts AC Running ground wires to the halides right now....
 
I'm not an expert but DC may be more damaging than AC. Not sure what you can do now besides trying to relieve stress, I would make night come early tonight for the corals. Also, you may want to run your skimmer wet and change your carbon, since this probably killed something in the tank, even if it's just some worms (hopefully). This is a good argument for getting a grounding probe.
 
I did cut the lights down and I do have a grounding probe, which may by why everything is not toast, but just real un-unhappy. I just changed the Carbon yesterday, so that should be fine...I guess only time will tell at this point.

Thanks for all the input so far.

GR
 
no reaction from the fish or corals yet.

I did find a power strip that was ready to melt down..

grounding the halides had no effect so I am thinking it is the cooling fans they are the radio shack 110 volt ones I am going to ground those next. I also dropped in a grounding probe

Blugobi by chance were the wires on your moon lights copper?

The dc voltage could have caused it to dissolve very quickly you may want to test for copper and run some copper remover.
 
George,
I think there is a better way to get rid of those nudis....hehehe

Gary,
glad to hear you made it trough that shocking ordeal.. sorry ...really glad you are ok/...
 
nope only changes when I unplug the strip with the halides on it. the pc's & VHO's don't make a diff.

it is at .02V with the grounding probe in the tank (probably the inaccuracy of the DVM) but I still want to find the source.
 
Gary, 0.02 is almoast definitely the accuracy of the meter. What make and model are you using? Fluke or somethin else?
 
Just got back from my sons Baseball game....not much change, but if I had to guess, getting worse, even my Xenia in my sump is almost pure white, but still pumping. Yes the wiring was copper, but it looks intact, Won't Hydrocarbon pull out copper? I won't turn the lights on until tomorrow afternoon...I think I will almost be afraid to. The only coral that still looks pretty good is the Hydro that got from you Gary :) Well one good sign is that none of my hermits have started eating on my corals so the must still alive to some dgree...I'll know when the buzzards are circling!!!

Jim,

I kind of thought you were going to say that about the nudi's...lol

Oh well all I can do is wait.....I am so PO'd at myself right now!!!!

Oh yeah, don't know if this is a coincidence or what, but I have an explosion of pods in my tank, I can see them running all over my LR...I mean my sump has been doing great, but this is likenothing I have eer seen...maybe the like electricity!!!
 
Sorry for the double post....but I could not stand it, I had to take a look with the flashlight and maybe it is wishful thinking, but it appears that some polyps are coming out, much more than when I first got home this afternoon. So heres to luck...woohoo! Well it would top off my whole day if everything bit the dust...I broke up with my girlfriend today and my son lost his baseball game.......
 
Ok triple post.... Well things are looking up, nothing has died as of yet and poloyps are starting to come back out. I can say that I am the winner of the Dumb A$$ award for this week. I had my water checked by St.James and my calcium level was about 350, however my Alk was thru the roof....5.80meq/l almost double natural sea water. So between the elctro-shock therapy and the Alka-Seltzer treatment I think I have got my self together. Did a water change tonight and will do another one tomorrow, to help bring the Alk back down to normal. Thanks for all the input.

GR
 
Remember, with a slightly lower calcium reading to not go too low on the alk too quickly. You might induce an alk crash with the poor chemical balance.

Hope all turns out well though, g/l
 
Quick update....seems everything is going to pull thru, the only casualty may be the Green slimmer, I think I may just frag it and see what happens. Over all, most of my corals are still pale, but are slowly getting there color back. Got my ALK and CAL back in line...will keeping a very close eye on those. ;)

Geo
 
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