Electrocuted entire tank!!! - Death Toll Update

[bassman]

The title says it all. I came home from work to find one of my 110v cooling fans dangling in my tank and it had been for several hours! Of course this has to happen 2 days before I was planning on installing GFI's!

Every coral I have is closed and many are emitting stringy tissue.
I am not sure what is alive if anything. My fish might be okay. They look a little stunned and some are breathing a bit fast. The fins on my Purple Tang are white on the edges, hopefully they will be all right.

As for my corals only time will tell I guess. If they are all dead I may pack it in. I have spent thousands of dollars in the past year getting this system going and I just can't see starting all over again. I would probably get divorced if I tried anyways.

So, anybody have any experience with this situation?

I am wondering if my LR is going to have a pile die off now thus causing my tank to cycle and sending my levels through the roof.

[Nate]

keep an eye on Ammonia levels...

And

Use plenty of chemical filtration

small Water changes and grounding probe would not hurt either.

[bassman]

Thanks Nate,

The daily ammonia testing will begin tonight. I am scheduled to change my water tomorrow anyways so I get more water ready right after that just in case I need it.

When you say chemical filtration are you referring to carbon?

[Beverly]

Pretty sure he means carbon.

How's the tank doing today? What bad luck for the fan to fall into the tank :sad:

[bassman]

I thought so too. I am running some now, I always do but I will replace it with some new stuff tonight.

It's hard to tell as my lights were off this morning and had been since 8:00 o'clock last night so most of my corals would normally be closed anyways.

I did find one dead snail this morning. The conch that I thought was dead last night has since moved so he must be okay. My harlequin shrimp, arrow crab and hermits all seem fine.

The fish are always behind the rock work in the AM so I couldn't see how they were doing, none of them died anyways so that's good.

I did see some pods with my flashlight this morning, that to me is a good sign. I would think that they would have fried first.

My elegance coral (which had the fan laying right on top of it) seemed to be opened up a bit more this morning and my clam was 80% open too.

I will know more when I get home afterwork, which seems like days away LOL

I couldn't even eat last night I felt so sick to my stomach.

It looks like I might have gotten lucky. Only time will tell I guess.
One of my concerns is how many toxins were released into the water by all of my corals and anemones trying to defend themselves against what they probably thought was an attack. My skimmer looked like someone had poured dish washing soap into it last night, major foam. I cranked it up a bit so it will skim more wet today, hopefully that will help. It didn't seem too be quite as foamy this morning.

I am still crossing my fingers.

[Tangman]

good luck

[bassman]

Thank you.

[OCDP]

Sounds like things are pulling through okay.....

I would continue doing regular water changes and running lots of carbon to remove as much toxins, etc as possible.

If your fish are alive and corals/inverts are showing signs of life.. I'd say things are looking up.

Good luck and sorry to hear the unfortunate news.

[bassman]

Thanks so much.

I sure hope they all pull through.

[vanreefer]

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=27483

same thing happened to me about 5 months ago with a clip on light... not to be the bearer of bad news but everything died with the exception of 2 pieces of SPS and my frogspawn... it took several weeks for the fish to die... I hope that my experience was not the norm for your sake... best of luck and I would do lots of water changes and run lots and lots of C

Good luck

Dan

[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. :neutral:

[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]

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. :neutral:

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

[bassman]

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]

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]

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.

[bassman]

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.

You would think so but the breaker didn't pop. Aside from that all my pumps, powerheads and heaters are on a separate breaker. Only my lights and cooling fans are on that breaker. The lights were on and the other fan was still running. Even the powerbar the two fans are plugged into didn't trip.

[bassman]

One other thing to note, is that the wire going to the fan slips onto two thin prongs. The connection is not very snug or tight. I can't remember for sure but I am 99% sure that the wire had come unplugged from the fan itself but both were fully submersed in the water. It's the same end you find on a cord that plugs a ghetto box in, two little pins.

Not sure if that means anything to you electrician types out there or not.

[bassman]

Death toll update:

5 snails
1 Blue sponge
1 Derasa Clam
1 Pulsing Xenia Colony

Other then that my other corals seem to be recovering, slowly.

I think I got lucky.

I was talking with an electrician at work yesterday and he isn't really sure how much of a shock the tank would have received. Being that the cord came detached from the fan as it fell into the tank and was dangling in the water the current probably wasn't very strong. The electricity would'nt have had a place to ground out. The fan was not drawing any electricity so it was probably a fairly mild voltage.


I am wondering if the copper leaking from the fan motor didn't do the most harm to the tank. Never mind anything else that would have leaked out of it, i.e. grease etc.


It looks like most of my critters and corals will be okay. :biggrin:
I am very bummed that I lost what I did but it could have been much, much worse.

[Myanth]

Glad to hear all is well.

I had a glass 300W heater break on me. With no grounding probe, it stayed that way for what I can estimate to be two days, until I zapped myself when doing a water change. No ill-effects to the tank at all. Other that a small heat mark on the bottom of my rubbermaid sump.

It probably is contaminant related rather than electricity.

My heater smelled terrible but it had brittle stars inside of it when I unplugged it. They didn't seem to mind.

As far as I know, which isn't far, electricity will not affect any living creature unless it is in the path to ground. As good a conductor as tissue is, it's not as good as water. I gave the electricity a path to ground out the back of my arm to the grounded light shade. Ouch. Until that point it was surrounded by insulators and was just shorting to itself. No breaker trip either.

Just a sore arm.

Might want to test for copper. It would give you a good idea of what you are up against.

Mike

[bassman]

Glad to hear all is well.

Thanks, I am happy too.

As far as I know, which isn't far, electricity will not affect any living creature unless it is in the path to ground. As good a conductor as tissue is, it's not as good as water.

Yah that is I thought.

Might want to test for copper. It would give you a good idea of what you are up against.

Good idea. I should do that tonight. I have already done 3 water changes of 10% each but it couldn't hurt to see what the levels are.

Thanks again.