Narrowly averted disaster today

[Lucky Lefty]

Left the house at 9am this morning, tank was running as usual, all lights on, pump, powerhead, skimmer etc.

Had some spare time so I decided to come home for lunch today, which is now, at about 12pm.

Come around the corner to check my tank out as I always do, and at first I'm confused because everything is dark.

Did my lights burn out? Did I forget to turn the, on... Wait a sec.... Why is the water so calm???

Turns out the breaker tripped on the tank, ran to the garage, switched the breaker switch and everything powered back up.

Start looking around the tank... Where is the puffer? Not in his usual sleeping spots.. Found him on the sand, pressed up against the wall, by the time the water starts circulations again, he starts breathing EXTREMELY heavy and his body kind of twitch a few times pretty hard.. After about 30'seconds of this, he gets up off the sand and swims back to his sleeping spot between the rocks and is back to looking normal and unstressed.

***.

What can I possibly do to prevent this. There are two outlets by the tank, but both on the same breaker, as I have the powerhead on its own outlet, and that was off when I walked in.
I know an apex controller will alert me if it shuts down, but what can I do if I'm far from home and can't flip the breaker switch, and no one can access my house do to being locked up.

My guess is that the tank was without power for about 2 hours, because I've had my tank with no power for about an hour to 1.5 hrs before, when I was changing plumbing and doing a water change, and everything was fine. The puffer didn't show a single sign of trouble that time.

The really good thing is that the tank shut down and didn't overflow the sump. Considering my day 1 adventure in this hobby, I think I'll always have nightmares about flooding my floor.. Again.

Any input or advice on how to prevent tripping the breaker, or a great backup pla would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[rocsec1]

Battery back up for one of the powerheads

 

[Lucky Lefty]

I've seen the vortech backup kit... I thought that would only work with the ecotech powerheads..
will that backup work with other powerheads with standard plugs?

 

[CuzzA]

I have a few suggestions.

First the outlet needs to be a GFCI if it isn't already.

Second, you're pulling too much of a load on that circuit and that's probably why it tripped the breaker. You can have an electrician or if your handy, remove some of the load off that circuit or even better, make it a dedicated circuit. Just so you understand what happens when you pull too much power on a circuit, the wires inside your home get extremely hot. If for whatever reason your breaker failed there is a probability of an electrical house fire.

Finally, you should have a battery backup. Personally, I set up a deep cycle marine battery (outside), maintained by a Battery Tender and wired it to a Kisae transfer switch. The transfer switch will automatically switch to battery power in the event of a power loss and vice versa. The benefits of this over say a UPS is that I can go 24 hours plus before the battery is drained, unlike a UPS which may give you a few hours depending on the size.

 

[Lucky Lefty]

I have a few suggestions.

First the outlet needs to be a GFCI if it isn't already.

Second, you're pulling too much of a load on that circuit and that's probably why it tripped the breaker. You can have an electrician or if your handy, remove some of the load off that circuit or even better, make it a dedicated circuit. Just so you understand what happens when you pull to much power on a circuit, the wires inside your home get extremely hot. If for whatever reason your breaker failed there is a probability of an electrical house fire.

Finally, you should have a battery backup. Personally, I set up a deep cycle marine battery (outside), maintained by a Battery Tender and wired it to a Kisae transfer switch. The transfer switch will automatically switch to battery power in the event of a power loss and vice versa. The benefits of this over say a UPS is that I can go 24 hours plus before the battery is drained, unlike a UPS which may give you a few hours depending on the size.

Awesome awesome awesome stuff right there.. I hate messing with electrical work, so maybe I can find a buddy to take a look for me.

The marine battery is a GREAT idea. I'm going to read what you wrote like 10 more times so I can try to understand it exactly, and hopefully I can implement that into my setup ASAP.

House fire I do not want. Definitely not. So I'm going to take your advice very serious and try to make all the changes you just discussed ASAP.
Changing the outlet to GFCI, is that as simple as unscrewing the existing outlet and popping in a new GFCI one, or do I have to change something else as well.

This is the first time the breaker tripped. Dont want it to happen again... Well I want it to happen if it needs to, but I'd rather it not have to

 

[Lucky Lefty]

Taking the load of the circuit... Is that a s simple as moving some wires around in the breaker box? Maybe buy an extra switch and transfer the wires to those two outlets to its own breaker switch?
Of course, I would have a real electrician do this, but is that all that is required?
Thanks a lot for the input man, I really appreciate it.

 

[CuzzA]

Taking the load of the circuit... Is that a s simple as moving some wires around in the breaker box? Maybe buy an extra switch and transfer the wires to those two outlets to its own breaker switch?
Of course, I would have a real electrician do this, but is that all that is required?
Thanks a lot for the input man, I really appreciate it.

You're welcome. So, I'll start by saying if you don't have experience working with electricity or don't feel comfortable... DON'T!!! It will kill you dead, like really dead! ;-)

Now that we got that out of the way. There is likely a bunch of other outlets that are on that one circuit. If the wires feeding these other outlets are accessible then an electrician can take them off of that circuit and put them on another by simply tying them into another circuit (As long as that other circuit won't become overloaded).

Or like I said before, the best plan of attack would be to access the wire feeding the tank outlet and have the electrician run a new wire to the breaker box and add a new breaker (if you have room on your breaker box). This would now become a dedicated circuit for your tank and should supply ample power without any risk.

I'll add, I would estimate a new circuit would cost around $250 by a licensed electrician and he could further diagnose what is going on more than I could through this forum.

 

[Reef Frog]

A GFCI can save your life but will still trip until the underlying problem is resolved.

This happened to me last month. The culprit was a MJ1200 pump in my WC mixing barrel next to the aquarium. I was probably at fault as I would pull the pump out by the cord which probably stressed the connection. The junction between the cord & the connectors in the pump housing was loose, it shorted & the circuit breakers did their job. Like you I found it right away so no damage was done, no life lost. So maybe checking your pumps one by one is a good idea. Heaters are also notorious culprits.

I like the idea of separating the two plugs on individual circuits and splitting the pumps/power heads between the two. Chances are they won't both trip at once. You never go wrong with redundancy. I'm going rondo this when I upgrade to a 6' tank.

The Exotech pumps & battery BU provides great peace of mind. You can save some cash with a DIY set up but this system is easy and compact and works flawlessly for me. BTW there is a sale on the pumps going on now but not the backup unit. If you wanted the pump anyway, the extra $165 for the battery unit wasn't too bad when compared to buying a battery &'specialized inverter needed for microprocessor driven DC pumps. Not to mention who knows how much time, money & effort I have in my current 65g. Hoping you get it sorted out & stay safe!

 

[StartrTank]

Another option if the outlet for the tank is hard to get to/work on and you're not sure of which outlets are upstream from that outlet is to replace the breaker with a GFCI breaker, then everything on that circuit will be protected.

 

[CuzzA]

Narrowly averted disaster today

Another option if the outlet for the tank is hard to get to/work on and you're not sure of which outlets are upstream from that outlet is to replace the breaker with a GFCI breaker, then everything on that circuit will be protected.

Correct, but that is not a solution if the circuit is overloaded.

I forgot to mention, on my battery back up I have a Wagan 400 watt pure sine wave inverter.

 

[ca1ore]

Whatever the reason for the tripped breaker, it is a good idea to split devices across more than a single circuit just for redundancy. Having some kind of battery on at least on powerhead is also a good idea. Power loss is manageable if you are home; a potential disaster if you are not. Lived up to your username I'd say :lol:

 

[Lucky Lefty]

Thanks all.. im seriously studying your advice and trying to devise a plan to help the situation.

Cuzza, I love the sound of your backup system. I'm going to make an attempt to setup the same exact thing once I figure it out.

I'm going to try and figure out which outlets are on that one breaker, and then figure out which wires are running from those 2 outlets, then I want to put each outlet it's own breaker switch, just to be redundant and if one fails, one will stay running, hopefully.

I'm not that confident with electrical, so I'm most likely going to try and get someone to help me out.

Before I left the house, I shut off the two 250w halides that were running and just left the PCs on, mainly so I didn't risk tripping the breaker, and also partly because once I told my wife about it, she also said "that makes sense considering our electric bill has been higher than our car payment lately"..which made me feel terrible, considering my car payment is $250, and the electric bill is usually under $100 now I'm trying to figure out how to manage all the power properly, and cut down some consumption as well.

 

[Lucky Lefty]

Lived up to your username I'd say :lol:

Haha.. by the skin of my teeth this time. Odds are against me next time :/

 

[CuzzA]

Give me some time and I'll draw up exactly what I did. Gotta play catch with my son at the moment.

 

[Lucky Lefty]

Give me some time and I'll draw up exactly what I did. Gotta play catch with my son at the moment.

Dude, play catch with that kid every chance you get! Those moments are fleeting, and it's great to hear about a dad taking time to be a dad.

Looking forward to seeing your write up on it!

 

[JMorris271]

+20:thumbsup:

 

[Reef Frog]

Keep in mind that using high amperage drawing devices can trip a typical household circuit that is not over loaded. Examples include vacuum cleaners, microwaves, AC or space heaters, power tools etc. Don't know if this applies to your situation but it is possible.

A vacuum that's drawing 12 amps (which can have an even higher draw upon start up) could overload a 20 amp circuit that is only handling 1/2 it's rated capability. Was somebody harvesting dust bunnies or playing with power saws nearby?

 

[lutz123]

Totally agree with the comments and advice regarding a possibly overloaded circuit. Get an electrician to run a separate circuit. In the meantime, calculate all of the wattage of the current equipment running off of that outlet. Unless your circuits are well-documented it can be difficult to figure out what other outlets run on that circuit.

Isn't there a calculator on the reefcentral home page?

 

[Lucky Lefty]

Was somebody harvesting dust bunnies or playing with power saws nearby?

No, my wife left for work before me this morning, and she didn't return home before I did at noon. I called her to ask if she had stopped home to see if she noticed the tank being on, but she wasn't home.

I'm not sure what it was exactly, but my power strip is full, and everything was running at full steam.

Sometimes throughout the day, I hear what sounds like my furnace or hot water heater do like a "double click" that you can hear pretty loudly from anywhere in the house.. almost sounds like something checking itself and flipping a switch real quick. When it happens the lights will flicker very quickly, and I can hear the power kinda of adjust for a quick moment. If I'm by the fish tank, I can hear the click effect the return pump and make the power kind of lull for a very quick second. Wonder if that did it?

Until I make some sort of change, I think im just going to NOT run my metal halides. At 250w each, they've got to be pulling the most power out of all my equipment.

 

[smmiller506]

If you go with outlets dedicated to their own breakers, please don't do a multi-wire branch circuit. If you lose the neutral going to the breaker panel, you'll have 240 volts going through your equipment. Which could be really bad with your in-tank pumps, powerheads, and the heater.