Electrocuted entire tank!!! - Death Toll Update

[bassman]

1st I am very sorry to hear about your loss, trust me I now know exactly how felt.

I was just wondering, did the bulb break? Light bulbs contain some pretty nasty chemicals and gases.

I read you original thread and some of what you seem to have experienced hasn't to happen to me (yet), as far as the merkyness (sp?) in your sump water goes and none of my corals have bleached.

Obviously I am reaching for straws here, just hoping I don't loose everything.

Update for today is that my fish all appear fine. The white edges on my purple tangs fins are gone. All are eating and acting normal.

My corals have not returned to normal by any means. Some of them appear to be a little more open then yesterday and others are totally closed. My frogspawn looks grey :-( and my star polyps have not opened at all. My poor feather duster looks totally frazzled but atleast it's coming out.

I guess it's a waiting game now. I did a 10% water change tonight and I will do 10% a day for a couple of days atleast. I added new carbon to my sump and am planning to replace that in a few days as well.

[Black Phantom]

Glad to hear that everything looks like it should recover. On another more serious note, get your GFI installed now. If you had been reaching into the tank when that fan fell it might have been a different story.
People don't realize that when you get electrocuted your muscles contract and it is impossible to let go of the energized object. This means that if your arm is in your tank you won't be able to push away.
Just a thought.

[G1GY]

Sorry to hear about this.

It would be shitty to see someone who still has an intrest leave the hobby because of bad luck thats forcing them out due to the cost of replacement.

I can't offer acro's because I don't have any, but if you lose your frogspawn and gsp I will give you some frags of these to get you started again.(I might have some other stuff you may be interested in also.)

Hope it all works out for you, but if it doesn't just pm me to come by and pick up your frags.

[Nate]

I recall reading something about how fish can handle a certain amount of electricity.

That does not suggest that there are not exceptions such as cartiligenous fish (sharks and rays), and fish that have an electrical organ such as FW knifefish I believe in the family Morymid? sp?

Anyways, like I stated earlier, maintain good water quality, and you should be through the worst.

Nate

PS I did mean carbon or purigen, or any other chem filtration

[bassman]

Originally Posted by Black Phantom

Glad to hear that everything looks like it should recover. On another more serious note, get your GFI installed now. If you had been reaching into the tank when that fan fell it might have been a different story.
People don't realize that when you get electrocuted your muscles contract and it is impossible to let go of the energized object. This means that if your arm is in your tank you won't be able to push away.
Just a thought.

I couldn't agree with you more, I am installing them today! Thanks for the heads up.

[bassman]

Originally Posted by G1GY

Sorry to hear about this.

It would be shitty to see someone who still has an intrest leave the hobby because of bad luck thats forcing them out due to the cost of replacement.

I can't offer acro's because I don't have any, but if you lose your frogspawn and gsp I will give you some frags of these to get you started again.(I might have some other stuff you may be interested in also.)

Hope it all works out for you, but if it doesn't just pm me to come by and pick up your frags.

Thanks so much for your offer, I really appreciate it and I may take you up on it. As of this morning a few of my corals are looking a bit better. My sun coral isn't looking too bad and my hammerheads seem to be a little fuller as well. The frogspawn is still questionable though.

It looks like I may have gotten lucky. I still struggling to understand how the electricity would have reacted in this situation. Something doesn't seem right. I thought there would have been a lot more damage, it's almost like the current wasn't very strong or couldn't ground or something. I don't know enough about it to even guess. So far all I seem to have lost, for sure, is a couple of snails.

[bassman]

Originally Posted by Nate

I recall reading something about how fish can handle a certain amount of electricity.

That does not suggest that there are not exceptions such as cartiligenous fish (sharks and rays), and fish that have an electrical organ such as FW knifefish I believe in the family Morymid? sp?

Anyways, like I stated earlier, maintain good water quality, and you should be through the worst.

Nate

PS I did mean carbon or purigen, or any other chem filtration

Thanks Nate, next water change t-minus 10 minutes. How often should I be changing the carbon? I put a brand new bag in my sump yesterday.

[KrazyKuch]

The Electricity would take the best possible root to ground....since you don't have a ground probe or anything the only way for the electricity to flow is the same way it came in, through the neutral conductor on the fan which would result in a dead short which should have tripped the breaker.....So in short your Fishy family would have recieved a minor electrical shock, and for the most should be fine.....depends on how long it took for the breaker to pop if it ever did???

[Dave C]

I wouldn't have thought the fish/coral would have received any shock at all since they aren't grounded. I imagine the breaker popped, the lights were out, same with all return pumps, current and heat and you're seeing the results of that outage. I bet they recover fine.

[bassman]

Originally Posted by KrazyKuch

The Electricity would take the best possible root to ground....since you don't have a ground probe or anything the only way for the electricity to flow is the same way it came in, through the neutral conductor on the fan which would result in a dead short which should have tripped the breaker.....So in short your Fishy family would have recieved a minor electrical shock, and for the most should be fine.....depends on how long it took for the breaker to pop if it ever did???

That's sort of what I thought but I know nothing about electricity. I was reading on grounding probes and from what could understand it would have made it worse.

The breaker never did pop.