Heavy duty extension cord question

[Nuuze]

Hi All,

I have a question for all you electrician reefers out there. I'm afraid I'm coming close in amperage on my curcuit that my tank is on. So far nothing has tripped. I saw some places selling 12 and 14 guage 10 foot extension cords and was wondering if they are safe to move some stuff to another circuit. Another option I thought about is to move my entertainment system that is all plugged into a Monster power distrubution center to the new circuit. None of this can be done though without either an extsion cord or a new circuit.

My entertainment system is drawing close to 4-5 amps if everything is on showing on the Monster display but 3 if just watching TV.

My tank has 2-250w mh and 4-54w T5's, 1/5 chiller, Eheim 1250 and 1260, 200w heater and Tunze 6000's. My two MH/T5 ballast say 2.5 amps max on each of them and chiller says 6 amps and a few other things.

Let me know what you all think, thanks!

 

[old salty]

The heavy gauge, contractor grade power cords will be just fine. Try to use the shortest length cord that you can use.

 

[klam114]

At my old house that I'm moving out from, I found out that the electrical circuit for the kitchen was on the same circuit as the family room near the kitchen. Found out the hard way when 2 of my tank setups plus the microwave and toaster are on at the same time, it tripped the circuit. When going to the fuse box, found out they were all on one 20amp circuit. Since we didn't own the property, the landlord wasn't going to do anything. I just never turned on the microwave and toaster at the same time and even with 2 reef tanks on that same circuit, never tripped the circuit again unless the microwave and toaster was going at the same time. You might be just fine not having to move some equipment over to another circuit.

 

[Nuuze]

Great news! I just discovered the power cord from my Monster Power Center was rolled up. Once I got it all unrolled it reached the other outlet that's on another circuit. Woohoo! Now I can stop worrying whether or not I'm close to tripping the tank circuit or not.