kmbyrnes
New member
Now that I have identified the issues leading to yesterday's near disaster, and all my tanks are back running, I want to remind everyone to check your electrical connections.
I woke up Monday morning, and headed for coffee. When I reached the kitchen I was hit with the unmistakeable odor of burned electric components. Worse ... dead silence. No calming sound of water agitation on the reef, FOWLR, or QT tanks. And lights in the family room didn't flick on either.
I was now wide awake. I put on shoes and grabbed a flashlight . No tank electrical, no water movement. I quickly found the root cause and unplugged all the electric to the FOWLR and checked the GFCI ( that I thought was protecting that circuit ). Not tripped. I went and reset the circuit breaker at the box and went inside to assess the damage, fearing the worst.
When I went to bed Sunday night after working on my FOWLR, I left a hand towel where part of it could fall in the tank. Needless to say, it acted as a wick, and managed to drip water ... about a gallons worth. That was not the issue. The water dripped onto a power strip mounted inside the stand on a back brace, causing a short, arcing and eventually tripping the circuit breaker.
Fortunately, the only 2 ruined items were the power strip ( cheap big box type ) and the power cord for my DC return pump. I have plenty of power cords from old PC's so that was no issue. The pump itself fired right back up. All the livestock was fine, so it must have happened just a short time prior to my getting up.
So now I KNOW the GFCI I THOUGHT was protecting my tank circuit is NOT. I will be correcting that this weekend, as well as remounting all my electrical to prevent this from happening again.
If you have not checked you electrical connections lately - put it on your list. Just because it has worked fine for months does not mean you haven't knocked a connection loose.
I woke up Monday morning, and headed for coffee. When I reached the kitchen I was hit with the unmistakeable odor of burned electric components. Worse ... dead silence. No calming sound of water agitation on the reef, FOWLR, or QT tanks. And lights in the family room didn't flick on either.
I was now wide awake. I put on shoes and grabbed a flashlight . No tank electrical, no water movement. I quickly found the root cause and unplugged all the electric to the FOWLR and checked the GFCI ( that I thought was protecting that circuit ). Not tripped. I went and reset the circuit breaker at the box and went inside to assess the damage, fearing the worst.
When I went to bed Sunday night after working on my FOWLR, I left a hand towel where part of it could fall in the tank. Needless to say, it acted as a wick, and managed to drip water ... about a gallons worth. That was not the issue. The water dripped onto a power strip mounted inside the stand on a back brace, causing a short, arcing and eventually tripping the circuit breaker.
Fortunately, the only 2 ruined items were the power strip ( cheap big box type ) and the power cord for my DC return pump. I have plenty of power cords from old PC's so that was no issue. The pump itself fired right back up. All the livestock was fine, so it must have happened just a short time prior to my getting up.
So now I KNOW the GFCI I THOUGHT was protecting my tank circuit is NOT. I will be correcting that this weekend, as well as remounting all my electrical to prevent this from happening again.
If you have not checked you electrical connections lately - put it on your list. Just because it has worked fine for months does not mean you haven't knocked a connection loose.
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