worst night of my life

[scub steve]

Originally Posted by BMW Rider

I had a heater do that a couple years ago. I too had procrastinated at installing the GFCI outlet, but I did have a grounding probe. There was a heck of a mess in the sump, lots of black scum and a horrible burnt smell. I did a big water change and ran a ton of carbon in it afterwards. I was fortunate to have no losses. Got the GFCI installed the next day and replaced the heaters in both tanks with titanium ones.

ya i got some cleaning up too do but everything died pretty instant in my tank. on the plus side my cyano seems to be doing just find i think im going to vomit lol you cant kill that stuff

[TRIX]

Man that sucks. My theory....... If you have your heaters in your sump and have a grounding probe close by the electricity should go almost directly to the grounding probe. So none of the electricity should make it's way into the display tank thus reducing a killer jolt to any livestock. Now if you don't have a sump I would put the probe as close as I could to the most concentration of electrical things in the tank. This is just my thoughts. But man don't give up. Take this oportunity to make any changes you've always wanted to and start again.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Condolences man. It really sucks that this happened at this time, but going bigger & better is the way to beat these blues.

Anthony

[scub steve]

were do i get a grounding probe???

[TRIX]

Most salt water stores carry them. JL aquatics http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/s...oduct_ID=mc-gp .

[deep_six]

I feel for you!
Believe it or not I had a similar experiance a couple weeks ago. I put a second heater into my sump to better regulate temp. and not even an hour later it completely exploded. The side of my sump was gone and there was water all over my office entrance. Luckily there was not a lot of damage to the main tank and most of the fish and corals survived. Although my toadstool leather did close up for about a week after.
Everything seems back to normal now.

[Dale]

Hi Deep six! Welcome to the forum.

It's probably worth noting the difference between surge protectors and GFCI's.

A surge protector protects delicate electronics from surges originating from the grid (lightning strikes, transformer accidents).
A GFCI prevents an electrical component from drawing too much power from the grid (malfunctioning heaters, knocked in lights).
A surge protector won't prevent electrification of the water but a GFCI will. I don't know if it would have helped in this case but a GFCI's reaction time is in milliseconds. A grounding probe is useful in removing random stray voltage but it would not help in a large way in this situation. The grounding probe would try to draw off the unrestricted voltage from the heater but it could not turn the heater off. Only a GFCI or a blown fuse/breaker would do that.

As you can tell I am a big fan of GFCI's and I try to install them in every system I set up. I have already had a client that had her arm elbow deep in the tank when she knocked the actinics in. She received a small shock but the GFCI worked and tripped off the power supply.