Dog boy Dave
New member
Yea sounds bad doesn't it? So last week i thought i would redo my canopy. I had all the parts together. Simple job, what could go wrong?
About a year ago I pulled off 2400 watts of metal halides and installed some homebuilt LED fixtures. I have a thread about them but the short and sweet is they did ok but under blue and white lamps my color was lacking. So....I saw a chinese Ebay light for $179 each. Instead of just blue and white it had multiple colored lamps and the color was phenomenal. So I ordered one , loved it and ordered two more. They work great, color and growth is as good or better than it was under halides but with all the changes my halide hood needed redone to better suit the LEDs....So i built a new hood and set up all the old lights in the new hood and installed it. All day job but the coral looked great and everyone was happy.
The next morning I went out to the tank and several of the corals were bleached almost white. The entire tank was stressed and the water was slightly cloudy. Well, these guys had been under LEDS for almost a year now. I had moved them around and turned up some intensity but surely this couldn't be from the lights? Alk and ca were normal, maybe something got dropped into the system. I was moving stuff around. So i changed 60 gallons of water and added carbon. They looked a little better but still obviously stressed and they had full polyp extension. Weird, my corals never extend much during the day as i keep large angel fish. By late afternoon the water is even cloudier and getting worse.
At 6:30 I went to lead a class at my gym and came back around 8 and the tank was looking even worse. I had looked around the tank earlier but i kept searching around the system and then i noticed a puff of smoke come out from the back side of my overflow. OMG is that an extension cord? It was, and it was hanging in the water. I pulled it out and it was crackling and fizzing, still live. I was about a foot from a titanium grounding probe that i keep in the overflow as well. The probe may have saved my system.
So its been a week. I have some before and after pics and some current as well. I will post them through the weekend after i download and process. I haven't lost any coral. Some are bleached almost white, most show no effect at all. It seems like only the brown zoantharia was affected by the AC. Apparently, my fish were not affected at all . The cloudy water was caused by one of my large carpet anemones spawning. The water got as white as milk and the anemone also spawned the following say as well. I believe the spawning was induced by the AC, but cant be sure that was the trigger. have had one of the anemones since 1995 and this is the first time it has spawned so....
In addition today i noticed all my caulerpa had crashed. I have had this particular strain of caulerpa for over ten years and it has never crashed. I believe the crash was also triggered by the AC. The effect of the AC on the algae and the zoantallia is intriguing. If the bleached corals survive, I think the after pics will be interesting.
Once again, i will post some images soon. I think all my corals will survive. IT remains to be seen if the bleached individuals will be able to recover but based on how they look a week after the event , I believe they will. I honestly think I dodged a bullet here. I think the effects would have been much worse without the grounding probe.
About a year ago I pulled off 2400 watts of metal halides and installed some homebuilt LED fixtures. I have a thread about them but the short and sweet is they did ok but under blue and white lamps my color was lacking. So....I saw a chinese Ebay light for $179 each. Instead of just blue and white it had multiple colored lamps and the color was phenomenal. So I ordered one , loved it and ordered two more. They work great, color and growth is as good or better than it was under halides but with all the changes my halide hood needed redone to better suit the LEDs....So i built a new hood and set up all the old lights in the new hood and installed it. All day job but the coral looked great and everyone was happy.
The next morning I went out to the tank and several of the corals were bleached almost white. The entire tank was stressed and the water was slightly cloudy. Well, these guys had been under LEDS for almost a year now. I had moved them around and turned up some intensity but surely this couldn't be from the lights? Alk and ca were normal, maybe something got dropped into the system. I was moving stuff around. So i changed 60 gallons of water and added carbon. They looked a little better but still obviously stressed and they had full polyp extension. Weird, my corals never extend much during the day as i keep large angel fish. By late afternoon the water is even cloudier and getting worse.
At 6:30 I went to lead a class at my gym and came back around 8 and the tank was looking even worse. I had looked around the tank earlier but i kept searching around the system and then i noticed a puff of smoke come out from the back side of my overflow. OMG is that an extension cord? It was, and it was hanging in the water. I pulled it out and it was crackling and fizzing, still live. I was about a foot from a titanium grounding probe that i keep in the overflow as well. The probe may have saved my system.
So its been a week. I have some before and after pics and some current as well. I will post them through the weekend after i download and process. I haven't lost any coral. Some are bleached almost white, most show no effect at all. It seems like only the brown zoantharia was affected by the AC. Apparently, my fish were not affected at all . The cloudy water was caused by one of my large carpet anemones spawning. The water got as white as milk and the anemone also spawned the following say as well. I believe the spawning was induced by the AC, but cant be sure that was the trigger. have had one of the anemones since 1995 and this is the first time it has spawned so....
In addition today i noticed all my caulerpa had crashed. I have had this particular strain of caulerpa for over ten years and it has never crashed. I believe the crash was also triggered by the AC. The effect of the AC on the algae and the zoantallia is intriguing. If the bleached corals survive, I think the after pics will be interesting.
Once again, i will post some images soon. I think all my corals will survive. IT remains to be seen if the bleached individuals will be able to recover but based on how they look a week after the event , I believe they will. I honestly think I dodged a bullet here. I think the effects would have been much worse without the grounding probe.
That's nuts Dave I've had a few close calls myself with electricity and my tank. I won't ever run w/out a Ground Probe & GFCI again. I don't care what the nay-Sayers say.
