Aquariums and GFCI

fkshiu · #1 05-02-2009, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JTaylor420

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.

hillegom · #2 05-02-2009, 06:18 PM

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.