Aquariums and GFCI
 

I'm amazed at how tanks I've seen over the years and even in discussions in pm where people don't have a GFCI on there tanks. Some people don't think they need it becuase their tank x amount of feet from the receptacle. Others just simply don't know what it is or what it does. A Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (like your bathroom receptacle) is not just for saving you if you get water in the receptacle, in fact that may or may not trip. Ill use an aquarium heater for example, it has two wires... A Hot and an ID, when your heater turns on it draws all its current from the Hot. That current HAS to go somewhere, it returns on the ID. Whatever current enters that has to leave, the ID carries just as much current as the hot, a lot of people don't know this. What a GFCI does is detect a difference between the Hot and the ID. Let's say your heater craps out, the glass breaks, cord frays from heat. A crab digs the epoxy out of the hole sealing it, you now could have the water in your tank part of the live circuit. A GFCI would trip in this case, it would sense a difference in current between what's being sent out to the tank... And what's returning. Without a GFCI, you could go stick your hand in there and boom... You now could be the path for that current to travel to ground instead of the ID. Electricity aint picky, it will use children and pets just as easily. Now that you know, is it worth the 25 bucks and couple minutes to install one?

Well put. I aggree 100% on GFIC and think it is a must have. I worked for a women who
ran a Aquarium service. She had set up a huge tank S.W. for a customer had it running
and fully stalked when I saw it no GFIC after spending thoasands of dollars on other
equipment. She had been in the business for years, I could hardly believe it. Oh and top
it off the plug was right below the tank. She didn't have a clue.

A GFCI has saved my ass from being eletrocuted before. It's worth its weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.

I just bought a pack of 3 at Home Depot for $40. No-brainer.

+1. It's too bad GFCI breakers are so expensive. But the logical workaround is to use the bathroom plugins because any downstream plug is also GFCI'd then in a way.

One thing has always confused me though. I hear 50% "this" and 50% "that", where one camp says a GFCI senses an imbalance between the hot and neutral wires, and the other camp says a GFCI senses any kind of current on the ground wire. Is it a case of "both are true" or is it a case of "the other one is an arc fault" (and if not, what is an "arc fault")? The reason I'm not convinced is because I once touched an otherwise all-powered-down light reflector (which was grounded), there was a static zap, and the GFCI tripped. (Nothing else was on at the time). So the static spark must have travelled to ground? That suggests GFCIs or at least THAT particular GFCI I was using at the time would trip on "current on ground" ?

One thing about GFCI's is I get these random trips, at the rate of say once per year or so. I'm not really sure what's up with that. That's an exceedingly difficult thing to troubleshoot and diagnose because I'll go through the checklist (unplug everything, add it back one by one, using a multimeter to see if there's any current to ground) and seemingly nothing will be the chronic misbehaver. I don't know if this means the GFCI is just dodgy, or it's some kind of very infrequent fault that comes and goes, or if my checkout procedure itself is "faulty" (pun quasi-intended :mrgreen:)

The camp that says "too ground" is correct as well to a certain extent, any current going to ground... Is NOT going to ID. A common work around for old houses where receptacles don't have grounds is to put all those circuits on GFCI. In fact, its required by code when doing a reno or any other changes to the wiring in those cases.

You certainly can get nuisance tripping on GFCIs. Ceiling fans for example, on startup it will draw more current then when running. For a brief moment that inrush current will oppose a change in current between hot and ID if its a large enough difference and for a long enough period, GFCI trips.

Arc fault is entirely different, its name is self explanatory, senses an arc, code says they have to be used in bedrooms... You push your bed or mattress up against the wall, bend the plug down causing an arc... That breaker will trip, without it, you potentially have a fire.

The logical choice is to NOT use the a plug on the LOAD side of the bathroom receptacles, what happens when you plug your 1200watt hair dryer in? You will overload that circuit with pretty much anything else running on that same circuit... And trip the breaker... Making nuisance tripping even worse.

I'm not sure I follow you on that last paragraph, sorry. :redface: Is that about arc faults still? Or the nuisance tripping? But nothing else in my house is plugged into the circuits I run my tanks off - they are solely for the tanks and associated paraphernalia..

So how come my GFCI tripped on the static discharge when nothing was on? (I touched the reflector which was grounded, there was a zot, and the GFCI tripped.) There wouldn't have been an imbalance between hot and neutral in that case?? Sorry I'm just trying to understand why it happened.

Oh, one more question .. what does "ID" stand for? I know you're referring to the neutral wire in this case but I've never heard it referred to as ID before, just curious what it stands for?

I didn't have a one for a while
 

Just to +1 the GFI thing. A while ago when I was building my 220, I had moved my existing 90 out of the way and off the GFI while The new tank was getting setup. While messing in the sump I had the heater glass explode IN MY HAND while live. And I mean the whole glass shield came off.
Now, that did give me quite the shock, electrically and mentally as the using was sparking and zapping as I held on to it.
Since then, I always have a GFI. Thankfully the wife was standing there and the power bar it was plugged into was withing her reach :redface:
Save so grief and drip loop power cords, install a GFI and don't be silly. 120V might not kill you but it will at least hurt -- a lot.

I was speaking of nuisance tripping in the last paragraph... I'm on a cellphone, hard to keep track of what saying on a tiny screen ;)

The rest well... There's a reason electrician have to go to school ;) a quick run down though:

Referring to that wire as the neutral is INCORRECT even though everybody and their dog does, in a 2 wire system it is the identified conductor, it carries full current. In a 3 wire system its called the identified neutral, it carries the difference of current. Between the two hot conductors. Ie. Your stove is a 3 wire system... Technically called 3 wire edison. Now this is gonna get your goat, what you call the ground is actually just a bond, bonds all metal and equipment, boxes etc together. The id and the neutral are considered the grounded conductors. Inside your panel the neutral (is the neutral in the panel) is jumpered to the metal case... This jumper is the Common Grounding Conductor (if I remember correctly) then goes to earth... Or "ground".

A ground fault interrupt does exactly as its name implies... A fault involving the grounded conductor (identified conductor).

Static can cause tripping, so can inductive loads (motors) static is very high voltage... Even as high as 25,000 volts and very very little current, if that small amount of current introduced is high enough to trip it, it will. Remember kids, volts don't kill, current does. A gfci might trip out at 5mA, it might only take 10mA to kill you. A GFCI does not protect you from shock, it shuts the circuit fast enough that hopefully it doesn't injure you seriously, where as the circuit breaker in your panel doesn't care, its looking for the amps its rated for, you could electricy running through you all day long, as long as the total draw aint reaching what that breakers rated for. Simply won't happen with a GFCI, or atleast shouldnt

I'll just quip in with this: while yes the gfi can protect you, it can also be a danger to your inhabitants. By that I mean, say you went on a holiday. And you had all your gear plugged into this trustful device, and pop it has a nuceince trip. Pumps are down heaters are down and your tank is toast. I say run your lighting and non mission critical systems on a gfi but keep at a min one powerhead and a heater off that gfi

I've split my system between 2 GFI breakers and a GFI outlet for that reason.

Not to be argumentative, but I personally value my life and that of my 3 year olds more then my coral. My tank is pretty important to me, but so is mine and my families. Another thing to check for is your home owners insurance. If a fire is caused by your tank and its not on a GFCI protected circuit or outlet I bet they would take that 'out' without losin any sleep over it. Having 1 thing protected and another not protected defeats the purpose.

IMO any current that could hurt me, could hurt any fish or coral just as easily. GFCI really is a no brainer.

Having a GFCI is something that has never even occured to me and something I probably never would have thought nessesary. Iv'e had my tank running for 5 years and thankfully never been shocked. I'll be picking some GFCI's up very soon.
Thanks guys

You know, I don't run a GFCI, because of the fact that they will trip and then you loose power to essentials. I am an electrician too. I am confidant enough in my wiring to know that everything is OK. I did have a leaky float. Shocked me once. But I've been shocked before, no big deal LOL

As confidant as you are with you're wiring, you don't control the build of the equipment in your tank nor what may happen to it over the years. And thought I never heard on the news fish tank owner electrocuted, shocks are a big deal and do kill.

ok i've heard debates on gfci's for quite some time now. Will I ever use one on my setup? the answer quite simply put is no. Does anyone know the difference between electric shock and electrocution? shock is a shock you'll live, Electrocution = death i see people quite frequently throw these terms around with no idea of what they actually mean. Ok first off i am an electrician and do u know what the number 1 problem i run into when dealing specifically with gfci's is? you got it probably from reading earlier posts, nuisance tripping. Are you guys aware you can grab a hot conductor of any voltage and have that voltage flow through you with absolutely no ill effect? if there is no path to ground through you then nothing will happen, i've done it so don't tell me i don't know what i'm talking about. For me personally i'm not scared of electricity i know that it simply will take the shortest path to ground and if it's not me great who cares. I do however on the other hand care very much so if i go out lets say at 6:45 am in the morning for work and boom 7 am nuisance trip when something kicks on. Guess what 5-6 at night when i come home i'll be some upset if everything in my tank is dead corals, fish everything 2000$+ wasted because some infernal device shut off for no reason.



Ok i'm not trying to preach my knowledge on anyone that's got it stuck in there head that gfci's are great, they are but not for fish tanks. If your concerned with with electric shock then cool, ground your tank i'd rather get a grounding probe in my tank that will short out the circuit if there is actually a serious problem and if livestock is lost that way well hey $hit happens. But as far as losing my tank over something that in all honestly will probably never happen i'd probably get out of the hobby. I'm not trying to start a heated debate here but honestly when was the last time a gfi has actually tripped to save your life? ever? i didn't think so.

I agree i dont think i will ever put a GFI on my tank for the reasons said above.

ya i definetly agree grounding the tank is alot more important and until like 2 years ago i had never even heard of it, wish i would have i had the cracked heater scenario happen to me one side of my body all numbed up i couldnt pull my hand out of the tank while it happed it realy sucked.

This should win "Most Irresponsible Post Ever".

If you are a licensed electrician you know that it only takes 200mA to stop your heart, it might not happen often but it could happen any time you are shocked. You've been trained not to have your left hand grounded and grab something that might be live with the right, it's pure reflex probably. The average person kneeling down to get something out of their sump with left hand in puddle, right hand on busted heater is at serious risk.

Why do building codes require GFCI or current limiting sockets in bathrooms? Same thing.

If you lose your whole tank because the power was off for 12 hours you set it up wrong. There are all sorts of things you can do to minimize this risk.

I have a GFCI on my tank and feel better knowing that it is there but I wonder if I am defeating it's purpose by also having a UPS. I have just my power heads plugged into the UPS so if the GFCI trips or the power goes out I have some flow for a while. My question though is about the UPS preventing the GFCI form tripping if the ground fault results from one of the power heads plugged into it?

hey midgetwaiter, you name 1 electrician that has never been shocked at work. Sometimes it is necessary to keep power on the circuit while working on it, needless to say i've moved wires or had them brush against me (being live wires) with not even feeling a thing. Anyways i'm just putting in my 2 cents on the subject take my opinion's for what you think their worth and use it or not. And about the gfi's in house's now like i said in my original post gfi's are great just not for fishtanks. Stop trying to look big like i said i'm not starting a debate here if you have nothing intelligent to counter my side of the argument dont waste your time.

I believe that a GFI saved my life. Like a lot of these things it all started out very routinely and innocently. I had cleaned my extermal return pump and started it back up again. It was making a funny sound so I simply started to poke around the pump and tapped at the volute while leaving the pump on. After a couple of taps the volute began spraying jets of water in my face and all around me. Like many people I have some powerbars under the tank. They are not sitting on the ground but are screwed into place with drip loops. When I finally stop the water I was kneeling in a large pool of salt water along with the soaked powerbars. In my panic I had flailed around and accidentally grabbed onto the powerbars several times. The GFCIs had tripped like they were supposed to. I felt nothing and there wasn't even a spark. My tank powerheads which are on a separate GFCI protected circuit kept running like nothing had happened. It turns out that I had not properly seated the volute into the pump which was the caused of the near disaster.

The important part of this is that I don't believe I would have qualified for a Darwin Award. I was doing something I've done numerous times before and did not believe I acted unreasonably yet something really bad almost occurred. I can think of a myriad of instances where someone is fiddling with something around their tank and something similar happens. For example, if you are fiddling with your lights above the tank and for some reason they fall into the tank. SW and electricity in such close proximity to each other is inherently risky. If you have young curious young children or pets the danger increases tenfold.

On a related note a firefighter friend of mine said that whenever they trace the cause of a fire back to an aquarium it's almost always a SW aquarium with no GFCI protection. This is probably because of the rat's nest of powerbars and wires that are under SW tanks and the fact that SW is a wonderful conductor of electricity. All it takes is for a few drops of SW to splash onto a powerbar to cause some sparks and away we go. GFCIs would prevent this. He says he's seen a lot of examples of a mass of powerbars melted together underneath SW tanks.

If some people are worried about one GFCI turning off all power if it trips, then why not run two GFCI's.
Behind my tank I have one outlet for my 50 gal. When I am going to change to my 120, I will add another outlet and have two GFCI's. That way, All functions in the tank will not go out at the same time.

My Dad was an electrician, I learned a lot from him, like how to handle live wires when fixing something. I work on computers, I have had a 2000Va UPS and a 17" CRT shock me. I understand electricity very well.

Somebody needs to "look big" and correct the dangerous info you are putting out there, the presence of water is a game changer and you need to realize that. You might not take much of a hit brushing up against 120 in the normal course of things but try it in socks with a wet (SW wet especially) hand, then see what happens.

You can confirm this by referencing any junior high science text book.

What's bothering me here is the "I'm an electrician, therefore an expert so listen to me crap on the use of GFI".

Hope I havent caused that feeling Mark ;) I'm the "Electrician" who started this post. I am no expert on GFCI.

Personally, I could care less what everyone decides to do with there tanks. This little debate has made some people think.. which is a good thing, others well... some interesting comments have come up to say the least.... and others i seriously find offensive coming from "electricians", its about I can take to end up going on a rant about one certain person in this discussion whos comments make me wonder how much experience they actually have. Hopefully I can leave it that... hopefully everyone knows good advice and bad advice.

I may not control the build, But I monitor the condition's, and inspect. But hey, like stated, I'ts a personal choice.

I am sure glad i put a GFCI for my tank circuit, a few weeks ago my son fell off a chair and crashed head first through the tank, while i was at work also an electrician. My wife rushed him to the hospital but didnt think to check if the tank was shut off, all the pumps and heaters running without water could have caused a fire, but the GFCI tripped possibly saving my son from a shock and possibly my house from a fire. Most tank manufacturers recommend you use a GFCI.

Regarding GFI's protecting from fires, there is a simple fix for that. Mount your powerbars and put in drip loops, how many can say that they actually do that? Have splash from your sump around the powerbars? use a acrylic sheet either ontop of the sump, or in front of the MOUNTED powerbars. Obviously if you have an equipment failure (broken heater or a mantis shrimp decided to take a chomp at your favorate powerhead cord) a GFI would be nice. But my experience (8 years in the hobby) says use a grounding probe tied right to a copper water line (please don't use the grounding prong on an outlet, you probably didn't wire your house and you can't be sure if it is a working ground without testing) will save you from those broken device. By all means use a GFI cct on non critical systems, but as i've said, experience has taught me that these things are more of a hinderance than help.

So okay then let's flip this discussion around. We have lots of people that have shared experiences about GFIs saving them from shocks or fires. Does anyone at all have a story about how a nuisance tripped GFI cost them livestock? Not a trip that was warranted, just a random event like is presented as an argument against them.

I have lost livestock to a tripped GFI but it wasn't a nuisance trip, something shorted in my ATO controller and I didn't notice for a couple days because I wasn't around. Lost 2 Bangaii Cardinals from the QT tank but all of the corals and fish in the other came through okay. Probably not worse than the controller going up in flames.

I'm afraid so, even though I took the "+1 on the use of GFCI's."

(Like I think I mentioned, but not 100% sure anymore,) I seem to get about 1-2 nuisance trips per year. I call them nuisance trips because I'm never able to find the cause. I've posted about this in the past and was told "it's because something caused it to trip." But I can't find out what, and if it only happens every 6 to 12 months there's no hope of being able to find it. At least when I plug things back in, nothing trips it, and no stray voltage in tank using a multimeter. <Shrug> Maybe I diagnose incorrectly, I'll admit I'm no electrician. I try to understand, but some things are above my head.

Anyhow, sorry, to the point, last summer I had a GFCI trip, and Murphy's Law kicked in, nobody noticed until a good 8 or 9 hours later. Ordinarily, I load share my tanks between two circuits, so if one GFCI trips, the other still tends to run, and usually either the sump return pump or the powerheads stay on. Because of this I've had power out on one circuit for long periods of time before, and never lost anything before.

But my 20g was all on one circuit, it was such a low-cost-to-operate tank that I just had it on the 1 circuit and so the tank was completely flatlined for the 8-9 hours.

I lost a pair of flame angels. I found them wedged into crevasses in the rock, one was so badly rigored I had to break the rock to remove him. Beautiful little pair of Hawaiian red flames and they were getting along perfectly too.

I regret that I lost these fish. I don't know that I regret the GFCI though still. Maybe the solution is to use a controller or something that can give an alarm when power goes out. At the very least, one of those powerfail screamer nightlight things, but I haven't been able to find any locally (I admit I haven't looked as hard as I could have though)

Like this: http://cgi.ebay.ca/PowerOUT-Power-Fa...3286.m20.l1116

Since starting SW, never have had a false trip.

Tony, have you replaced your GFI since that first false trip?

No false trips for me in 5 years+ of using them.

Yeah I remember you posting about this. An alarm is a good idea and if you can't find one you could put something like that together for about $10.

If you are interested I could draw it for you.

That'd be pretty cool, thanks.

Mark and Frank, are you using plug-in GFCI's or GFCI breakers?

I haven't replaced the GFCI's I use. I didn't consider that actually. :redface: ... I'm stringing new wires for my tank room and was looking at breakers. A GFCI breaker is like $80-ish versus $12-ish for a regular breaker and $15 for a plug GFCI. Are the breakers less prone to nuisance trips?

My entire house is on GFCI, its 65 years old, every circuits on a dead front (looks like a GFCI receptacle but can't plug anything into it. I've never had a nuisance trip. btw, I wouldn't call a short a nuisance trip, I'd call that 'doin its job' ;) I've never installed a GFCI breaker when a receptacle or deadfront will do the same thing.

Fyi, the receptacles are on sale at totem for around 8 bucks, I can't even buy em at my wholesalers for that cheap. If anyones got doubts about there's, change it.

All of mine are wall receptacle GFCIs.

Not sure if the breaker better than just the plug type as had no false trips with either just a friend had a bunch of GFCI breakers so no cost is why I went with them.

First breaker most of the downstairs gear (return pump, skimmer, etc) second breaker for upstairs ccts (CL, T5 ballasts) and the MHs are on a third cct daisy changed off a GFCI receptical.

I have a combination of GFCI circuit breakers, receptacles and even power bars that are now available. Recently purchased a small single plug-in GFCI adapter and that is the only one that has ever 'nuisance' tripped so I no longer use it on my tank related equipment. I was using it with a timer for two of my T5HO lamps and it would trip every time the lights came on. Used a GFCI power bar for the same equipment and it was fine. Maybe the single plug in GFCI adapter is faulty, didn't like the timer, dunno, haven't bothered to try another. The only other thing to be mindful of with GFCI power bars is that they may not power up again after a power loss. I do believe that the GFCI receptacles do not need to be manually reset if there is a power loss to your home which is subseqently restored. Pretty sure most of the portable GFCI devices need to be physically reset after being unplugged or if there is a momentary power interruption.

The only drawback (besides price) to using a GFCI circuit breaker is just that, every device on that circuit is GFCI protected and a trip will take out everything. A GFCI receptacle may be installed anywhere downstream of a normal circuit breaker and will protect only devices downstream of that receptacle. So if it trips, everything upstream still functions until the circuit breaker itself trips. The only GFCI breaker I currently use, supplies my bathroom circuit.

Most of my tank equipment is on one GFCI and the remainder is on a GFCI power bar, no nuisance trips so far. Count me in on the pro GFCI camp. For those who fear a nuisance trip will cost them their livestock, what is your contingency plan for a power outage when you're not around? That will cost you your investment just as easily as a tripped GFCI. Therefore the rationale for not installing a GFCI on your tank equipment for fear that a nuisance trip will cause the loss of your livestock eludes me.

I have a cheapo PennPlax Silent Air air pump which senses power loss and bubbles away until power is restored. I'm planning on a somewhat more sophisticated backup power setup in the future, but for now, the PennPlax with it's D cell batteries will at least provide some oxygenation in the event of power loss and/or GFCI trip. I should probably have two of these on my 75. I'm also planning on wiring up a battery backup for my VorTech MP40W using a deep cycle battery. That will keep it running for quite a while, might even hook two batteries up in series for 24 volts, so it runs at normal speed vice the half speed mode provided by the manufacturer's battery backup.

I worked on aircraft instrument electrical systems for many years, and having read some of the reasoning and opinions on this thread, definitely know who NOT to call to do any of my house wiring. When you're up in the air, there are no second chances, when stuff goes wrong, you're coming down, so redundancy and emergency back up systems are the order of the day.