Stray Voltage & Acro problem (any electricians in the house?)

[Kip]

yeah... i dont understand the details behind electricity... been far too long outta school and as long as the light comes on when i hit the switch, i dont think anything further about it

but it seems odd to me (with my little understanding of electricity) that when i ground the meter into the carpet of the house i get the reading, but when i ground it in an outlet i dont.

also dont know if it matters, but i only get the tingle with no shoes on

and.... i get the reading with a grounding probe and w/o

regardless.... what i do know is that when i throw the breaker that runs the halide... the tingle and the meter reading goes away....

i tried running the halides on a different outlet/different circuit... and i still get the reading and tingle.... so it is in the wiring, ballast, fixture, or creep somewhere.

 

[wjgeese]

The electrolytes in your blood (in the open wound) are carrying the stray voltage. That's why you dont feel it if you don't have any cuts on your hand. What I don't understand though is why the electrical sensation is greatest at the surface of the water.

Bill

 

[ssavader]

What you are describing sounds like a discharge of static electricity from the carpet, through your body, into the water. I can't explain the multimeter readings and the halides- Sulcata1619 appears to shed some light on this aspect. However, 1) you only feel the current when barefooted, and 2) your multimeter read a current when the probe was dropped on the carpet. Can you get a static shock rubbing your barefeet on the carpet and touching another object in your fishroom? If you rub your feet on the carpet and then hold the multimeter probe, does it register a current?

 

[Kip]

no static shock by rubbing and touching

i have narrowed it down to one of my lights. 2 out of 3 will not give me a tingle or a reading... i plug in the 3rd and i get tingle/reading

so... it is somewhere in the wiring, connections, ballast, or fixture of that 3rd light

and... jiggling some wires around behind the tank dropped the reading from 20 to 15v

getting close......

 

[Serioussnaps]

Kip.....where is the controller mounted?

 

[Kip]

the ac3.... laying on top of a UPS beside the stand .... i just installed a DC4 inside the stand that runs the lights.... i bypassed it to test ... i get the voltage reading with or without it

 

[speedstar]

<

but it seems odd to me (with my little understanding of electricity) that when i ground the meter into the carpet of the house i get the reading, but when i ground it in an outlet i dont.

[/B]

This is the difference between earth and ground. Ground is the potential the electric box is at and earth is the ground your seeing (your carpet).

This is how ground loops occur in electric systems.

browse through this http://www.epanorama.net/documents/groundloop/basics.html

and this

http://cim.pennnet.com/articles/article_display.cfm?article_id=62689


Where are the ballasts mounted? What equipment has direct contact with your floor if any/??

 

[Kip]

i will have a look at the articles in a bit....

ballasts are on a shelf in the garage

wiring comes thru the floor and the wires contact the floor

In the room with the display... a UPS is on the floor along with a vortech backup battery and two vortech drivers.

ground contact... in the crawl space.. my sequence return pump is on an 8" block on the dirt... but i dont get any change in shock/reading when plugging/unplugging the return.... the change is 100% associated with 1 of my 3 halides

 

[bill-fit]

It looks like your on track here to solving your problem I've read through the whole thread and have one more additional piece of advice no one else has mentioned.

The multimeter was the proper voltage testing device for testing the water for voltage.

It is not the proper equipment for testing an outlet because it has a very high internal resistance. Said another way it only takes a few nano amps of current durring a measurement.

When you tested the ground prong and got a full 120volts on the multimeter it didnt prove that you had a low resistance ground.

To prove your outlet is grounded you need a tester that uses some power.

The type I use contains an electromagnet that moves a dial by pulling a plunger against a spring. Knopp is the brand but there are many different brands that work .

If you don't want to buy one of those use a light bulb buy a rubber socket with the wire leads attached then you can use the stripped ends of those wires as meter leads.

 

[surfjeepzx]

Since you're in troubleshooting mode. If possible try swapping the leads at the ballasts. (IE. my ballasts have a plug at the ballast) see if the problem follows. That will help narrow it down to the wiring or the ballast of that particular lamp.

For what it's worth I used to frequently find myself chasing the same problem you have with cuts and tingles. I've since started using dielectric grease on ALL connections, even the electrical plugs for every device. I even use it in the bulb sockets.

It prevents salt creep and the salt air around the aquarium environment from corroding the electrical connections. Corrosion will carry current with moisture present. Also the corrosion is not always so obvious in it's early stages but just enough to give a path or "short" as it would be termed in the electrical world. Then you would have to troubleshoot it to determine whether it's a cross short or short to ground.

 

[Kip]

thanks guys... yeah.. swapping ballasts was where i was gonna start with the troubleshooting

 

[Dejavu]

glad to see you have final found the problem.

 

[dvanacker]

I don't know if I would be poping the cork on the champain bottle just yet.

Quite a few people have small amounts of stray voltage in the tank with out the symptoms that Kip has (including me)

Voltage is not the flow of electrons. Voltage is just potential. Current is the actual flow of electricity. You can have voltage with no passing current.

The best test would be to use a grounding probe and then an amp meter on the grounding probe to judge if the electrial leak is a low resistance leak or high resistance leak.

 

[Kip]

yeah... i am far from figuring this out.... and even farther from correlating it to my acro problems of the past 8 months

i swapped ballast connections and i still get issues when that "3rd bulb" is online... swapping the ballast didnt swap the issue to any other bulb. but what did happen... is the reading is now 14-15v instead of 20v

i think it may be in the lamp connection side of the ballast

i'd like to start that investigation tomoro.. but it is family event day ..... well, not ... a lot of folks would like some family time so i should say

after all... its just a fish tank....


.... that i have poured lots of time, blood, sweat, money, and tears into

 

[old salty]

I've got my fingers crossed for you.

 

[aquarius77]

My sump is lit up by a t5 coralife strip light and it sits on the drain plumbing (nothing pretty). Well I had a cut on my finger and was getting zapped so i went through everything with electricity inside the tank and unplugged it all, i was still getting zapped. I found out after some more unplugging that salt creep had built up and the sump light was causing the current. I washed it out in the shower and cleaned up all the salt and the zap is gone. I really need to hang that light...

I would guess over time you have some salt built up somewhere.

 

[Kip]

update... traced it down to one wire/fixture.... that wire layed on the floor behind my tank with a good deal of creep.... at the floor there was a connection for that wire... took the connectors off and there was corrosion... replaced afflicted parts... fired everything back up.... now only 2v on the meter (which i understand may be "incidental" ... especially with all of the gadgets I run on a large system)

i dont really know or understand what it meant when i was getting readings grounding the probe in the carpet... but all i know is that there are no more little shocks standing barefoot with my hands in the water.

now... to see if this affects any of my acro problems of the last 8 months

 

[TomRep]

I wish you the best of luck, Kip, and hope that was your problem! You've been through the rags with this thing. Keep us up to date!
tom

 

[Met3112]

I know its been forever here but what was the outcome. I am having the same problem with my tank. Many acros suffering. I touched my grounding probe and got a real good shock today.

 

[MammothReefer]

Good luck man, I ran into this problem a few years back turned out to be a titanium heater had blown under the plastic end caps. I found out one day when I was pulling my arm out of my tank while standing on a chair, (it was 60x36x24 tank so I had to stand on a ladder to reach the back) my elbow touched my luminarc pendent and grounded our my hand still in the water... I WENT FLYING. ....lol.. Now I never run a tank w/out GFI's and a Grounding Probe. I lost alot of stuff back then I could never figure out why things were just off even though my parameters were steady.