GFI saved my life tonight
 

So.... Cautionary tale to anyone who doesn't have GFI outlets on their tank.

I was working in my sump just now, trying to dig a piece of caulerpa out of my fuge that had fallen to the base of a pile of rocks. My left arm was in the sump up to my bicep, then I shifted weird and hit one of my fuge lights just so, knocked it off its hook, and it fell in the water perfectly right next to my hand. The reflector is wider than the fuge chamber and it normally shouldn't fit. It couldn't have been more of a perfect fluke if I tried.

I didn't feel a thing. The second it hit the water everything plugged in to that outlet blinked off. I unplugged the light, reset the GFI outlet, and here I am typing this all to you with nothing more than a good scare.

It doesn't even look like my fuge light is damaged. It's one of those super simple work lights with a CFL grow bulb. I've dried it off and it's good to go.

If that had been plugged in to a regular outlet my best case scenario would have been a serious shock and possibly a Mercury filled bulb exploding in my sump. Worst case would have been my family finding me dead tomorrow morning.

I hope everyone is using GFI, even though they can be a PITA.

Glad to hear you're OK Adam

I went overkill as I don't want 1 GFI for my whole tank, or 2-3 spread around ...
I have 13, yes, 13 GFCIs on my system ! And 3 surge suppressors on 2 circuits
No one item will turn off anything else so no worries about my heaters killing my return pump, or whatever

And I'm covered no matter what I touch

Overkill, yes

I also use GFCI for everything. It's saved me a few shocks over the years.

lol Greg you are so rich :). As you don't need that many GFCI in one place if they are on the same breaker or power line. What you need most is the ground probe to put in the tank it is cheap but it will ground all the water in the tank in case things like this happen.

13 GFIs in 2 circuits?
You know 11 of them are doing nothing right?

Not true
Everything in my system that touches water is plugged into it's own GFI

I'm not into having the whole circuit blow because of one bad piece of hardware

I am glad this had a great outcome. I had thought about putting in a gfi but forgot about it and well too late now I guess I should do up a will just in case

you do know for 2 circuits you only need 2 GFI receptacles installed...put one at the start of each circuit and attach the next one onto the LOAD side of the GFI that way everything connected after that goes back to the GFI in this case it would save you about $200 in extra plugs you just dont need...

Seems a little overkill but to each his own I guess.

still easy to do. one gfi with protect those downsteam or if hard to figure which, just replace the breaker (bit more expensive than receptacle)

You guys are missing the point

If you use 1 gfi per circuit you risk turning off ALL your equipment with just one piece failing

Lol all this gfi talk and I'm sitting here reading it.... The heater I have in my frag tank blows lights flicker. Ambiance of a paranormal activity. And the aroma of burnt water... Carry on..

Lol, that's why I went titanium. I can totally see why you'd want several GFI's and strategically group certain pieces of equipment together and not with other pieces. Nothing like your whole tank being shut down while you're not at home because one basically trivial piece of equipment fails.

I got 3 ccts (2 breakers and a recpt), 13 might be a little overkill

Not overkill at all. It's just smart. If one thing trips in your tank, the rest are unaffected and your system keeps running. Imagine your 1 or 2 gfci's trip in the morning before you went to work. 8 hours later...you come back to a possible disaster. I'd much rather loose one piece of equipment than everything.

I'd do that in a heart beat if I wasnt a cheapskate!

Glad you are ok Adam. I hate getting zapped!

If there all in series if the fist one on the line blows it will kill all the rest after it , same as if you have a gfi contolling several outlets . Or is there a different way to wire them up so they don't do that?

I don't have any. If anyone notices I don't post for a while, you know what happened :)

Do you guys plug your non power gfi bar to a gfi outlet?

my entire tank is on one gfi and i got a little strip light in my sump cabinet wet the other day. entire tank went down. i should get around to changing it but prob won't as i'm home almost all day.

Wire the devices in parallel. Means a lot of splices/marette connections, more wiring & cost of additional GFCI outlets. Essentially you continue to the next GFCI outlet by running wire from a marette splice instead of from the load terminals on the first GFCI outlet.

I think it's overkill as well to have 13, but I guess it depends on how many heaters, pumps, etc. you have & how critical you consider them on your system. I have 2 GFCI outlets each on a different circuit breaker. Haven't experienced a nuisance trip yet or tank crash as a result of GFCI shenanigans.

I was talking from an electrical point.
Anyways keep a heater and power head on each circuit and your system will be able to handle everything else off for a day while your at work.

Your house break would have tripped b4 it would "shock" you, GFIs work to prevent surges that can damage equipment, you can stand in your bathtub and drop a running hairdryer into it and you'll be fine (house breaker would trip)

-Your Friendly neighborhood Electrician

gfi work by comparing current between hot and neutral and trip on an milli-amp imbalance. Cause of the imbalance could be me in the circuit by at a lower level, but fatal, than a panel breaker would trip.

Bought myself one of these:

http://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/4-outlet.../6000109954969

Yay or nay?

Can you do a demo video? :)

Hahaha yea!!! Demo!! Ive been zapped numerous times, not once did the house breaker trip.

Not only that...the powerbar that the bad equipment was plugged into didnt trip either. Stray voltage stays in the aquarium for sure. Thats why they make grounding probes lol.

That'll do it. I have one of them as well, but don't use it for my fish tank since I installed a couple of in wall GFI outlets. I haven't read the specs for this power bar lately, but one thing to be aware of, especially for workshop type ones, is that many of them will not automatically reset after a power outage. The reason for this is that if you're running a portable power tool that trips the device, you may not want it to start up again unattended while you go reset the circuit breaker. Most of the built in/replacement wall outlet GFI devices will generally not trip when there's an outage & when power is restored by the hydro company, they will be on & continue to run whatever is plugged in to them. This is probably a good thing if there's an extended power outage & the power comes back on while you're away.

Quick way to confirm is to plug the GFI power bar in, go trip & reset the circuit breaker & see if it's still live after cycling.

For those folks who think they are safe using a grounding probe without a GFI device at the same time, do a little research. In the end, it's your choice & risk, but you could be liable if a friend, visitor, child gets injured when they stick a hand or arm into a tank with unsafe electrical components.