jml1149
New member
Don't tell my wife. She think's I'm accident prone already. There have been a few ambulance trips in my lifetime. This would put her over the edge.
Getting ready to do my water change last night, had been mixing my new water for a day and a half or so, good to go. Salinity checked out, but the water felt colder then I expected. Stuck my fingers in, yeah its cold. Got out my insta-read thermometer and sure enough it was 65 deg. Uh oh. So I reached into the brute bucket of water, pulled out the Marina quartz heater I used just for heating up water change water.
When the heater left the water, I felt a weird vibration between my fingers. I thought to myself, did I reach in and pull out the power head instead of the heater, even though I was obviously staring at the heater. And then I realized that was electricity flowing through my hand. I don't know how long this took, but it felt like a couple of seconds. I immediately let go and dropped the heater back into the bucket. Looking closely, I could see an arc somewhere inside the unit, near the heating element. Holy ef. To confirm I got out my multimeter and measured to ground. Sure enough, 120VAC 60Hz.
The circuit breakers and fuses used to protect us from these types of events. are based on thermal properties. More current flows through an element than expected, it heats up, expands, and trips something off. Or burns up if it's not resettable. In a bucket of water, there's nowhere for the current to flow, so it doesn't trip. But it's ready to flow when the circuit is complete. It's like a loaded gun waiting to go off.
I turned off the power strip and grabbed one of my stray current probes from my tank. Dropped the probe into the tank, turned the power strip back on and the power strip fuse blew immediately.
I've seen plenty of arguments about the need for stray current probes. But this is why you need them. This is exactly why. Luckily I was standing on concrete in crocs (shhhh) and wasn't touching anything else. However, if I was, there's a great chance that the current wouldn't have just been flowing through my fingers, but across my body. And that can be deadly. Literally. Palytoxin dealdly.
My fingertips are a little burned and I can't feel them today. That's the extent. But it could have been so much worse. Just buy the probe and put it in your tank. Anywhere you have electronic devices. They're like 20 bucks on Amazon. I don't know why people argue about these things.
Getting ready to do my water change last night, had been mixing my new water for a day and a half or so, good to go. Salinity checked out, but the water felt colder then I expected. Stuck my fingers in, yeah its cold. Got out my insta-read thermometer and sure enough it was 65 deg. Uh oh. So I reached into the brute bucket of water, pulled out the Marina quartz heater I used just for heating up water change water.
When the heater left the water, I felt a weird vibration between my fingers. I thought to myself, did I reach in and pull out the power head instead of the heater, even though I was obviously staring at the heater. And then I realized that was electricity flowing through my hand. I don't know how long this took, but it felt like a couple of seconds. I immediately let go and dropped the heater back into the bucket. Looking closely, I could see an arc somewhere inside the unit, near the heating element. Holy ef. To confirm I got out my multimeter and measured to ground. Sure enough, 120VAC 60Hz.
The circuit breakers and fuses used to protect us from these types of events. are based on thermal properties. More current flows through an element than expected, it heats up, expands, and trips something off. Or burns up if it's not resettable. In a bucket of water, there's nowhere for the current to flow, so it doesn't trip. But it's ready to flow when the circuit is complete. It's like a loaded gun waiting to go off.
I turned off the power strip and grabbed one of my stray current probes from my tank. Dropped the probe into the tank, turned the power strip back on and the power strip fuse blew immediately.
I've seen plenty of arguments about the need for stray current probes. But this is why you need them. This is exactly why. Luckily I was standing on concrete in crocs (shhhh) and wasn't touching anything else. However, if I was, there's a great chance that the current wouldn't have just been flowing through my fingers, but across my body. And that can be deadly. Literally. Palytoxin dealdly.
My fingertips are a little burned and I can't feel them today. That's the extent. But it could have been so much worse. Just buy the probe and put it in your tank. Anywhere you have electronic devices. They're like 20 bucks on Amazon. I don't know why people argue about these things.
