Ever get Zapped by your tank?

magdelan

magdelan

Fish?
I got ZApPeD really good tonight!! the solenoid valve to my auto top-off fell into the water of my sump tonight. I quickly went in after it. WAHHH!!!!!! It got me!! It shook my whole right arm all the way up to my neck!! Turned out that there was a short in the wiring to it. No more auto top-off for me. I was a bit leary about it in the first place. After all this was said and done, I checked the water with my index finger for any stray voltage (just paranoid now) and sure enough, more zippies in the water. This time it seemed that a powerhead was the cause. I had a powerhead in the refugium to increase flow. There must have been some sort of voltage leak in it. Now I'm afraid to touch the water at all!!! I need a Zima!
 
Do you have any special powers now? Can you read minds? Do you have X-ray vision? The gift of time travel or flight?
 
years ago with my first SW tank i had salt creap build up into the strip light so is was conducting the current and nuthing look bad all the fish were fine untill i stuck my hand in ther compleeting the circut. i jumped and banged my hand on the the hood. very strange felling to get zaped that good
 
I've felt little tingles off my lights. I don't know if it's a small short of just that there is so much static around that it electrifies the unit. Felt it on the Tek t5 fixture and power compacts.

Get a grounding probe if you've got stray voltage. Don't want youre friends in the tank to have to live in that.
 
ever have salt creep get into a wall outlet... and then try to plug a vacuum into that same outlet later?? not a good idea!

+1 on the grounding probe
 
Dont forget, if you use a grounding probe on to something like a powerstrip and have that powerstrip plugged into a GFI, be prepared for every single device on that powerstrip to stop working... Ground probes have their place but one needs to be really careful about using them...
 
well my hand was wet with salt water and i was messing with my filters setting them up and as i got closer to the outlet i could feel the voltage jumping to my hand
 
I've never been shocked by my tank (knock on wood) but i have been zapped by and electric cow fence before. Getting electrocuted is a pretty weird feeling.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13011862#post13011862 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Capt_Cully
Do you have any special powers now? Can you read minds? Do you have X-ray vision? The gift of time travel or flight?
Click to expand...

I can hear what women are thinking. I will be having a meeting at Victoria's Secret tonight at 6pm for those who want to know more.
 
Not tank relateted but I've been wacked by 320 volts DC from a tube unit at work. It burnt my thumb nail and part of my finger. Lucky me. My fingers and arm were kinda numb for about a week. I try to be careful with my tank.
 
If you are posting in this thread, you have never been electrocuted.

I did get shocked by my protein skimmer foam, yes foam, last week. Turns out a Koralia powerhead up in the main tank burnt up and water was leaking into it.
 
I had a shorted pump in a saltwater mixing can shock me once recently. It was just a quick numb-buzz to my hand since I retracted my arm really fast.

This occurrence, and the mention of the ground probe on a strip vs. gfi, did make me wonder about GFI's. If your main power items of your tank are all on a GFI and it trips, your whole tank could lose circulation from the return pump which would prevent heat/cooling and oxygen from reaching the display. Additionally the heaters themselves and the skimmer and/or other O2 adding devices could be on the GFI circuit. If my mixing tub were on the same GFI protected circuit as my main reef system when the mixing pump shorted, it would have killed my tank if i were not there to witness it and save the tank, reset the gfi, etc.

So a GFI could save my life but it could also kill my tank after being tripped by something simple, where if it were not on a gfi the tank would run fine. I also wonder about gfi's vs. power outtages, the load when the power returns, quick power stop-starts and 'flickers' during storms, brown-downs and surges, etc. My power goes out several times a year. I have a generator but as i said the power can stutter, stall , brown/surge etc before it finally goes out and is switched over to the generator. Also the switchover to the generator and return to the regular breaker panel are a dip + sudden load.

I do have a 2nd circuit run to my sumproom with a gfi outlet that I run most of my main reef stuff on right now however.
 
I was considering making an outlet+switch panel with a bunch of gfci outlets so that if one tripped it wouldn't trip every piece of hardware. I also came across these that seem like a quick fix for some of my wall outlets. I should have had one of these on my water mixing tub's outlet.

Shock Buster 5-Outlet GFCI

You can also get gfci's built in-line on extension cords with multiple outlets on the end, etc. but anything after a gfci on a line (in series) will be covered by the gfci so a regular extension cord plugged into the gfci outlet linked above would work just as well.

Some people say a grounding probe is a must with a gfci, others say not to use a grounding probe. That is covered in other threads though I just thought I'd mention it since this is about being shocked and concerns about electrocution. :cool:
 
I would think the severity of the shock would be lessened greatly with the use of a grounding probe IF there were ever amperage going thru the tank.
 
You can check for stray voltage in your tank by using a volt meter. Red wire goes in the water, black goes to a ground.

People often say that fish are sometimes effected by stray voltage. With the knowledge I have of electrical technology, I have to somewhat disagree.
 
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