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Old 07-03-2013, 05:32 AM
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Default Need help with stray voltage

Well the past few months have not been going so well for my 225 gallon SPS reef. Initially it started off with my blueface angel developing a decent case of HLLE along with my yellow tang also showing minor symptoms.

After ~6 months of diligent and large water changes, increased feedings of vitamin enriched pellets and frozen food and increased daily feedings of nori, the blueface angel has showed zero improvement from the initial onset of the HLLE. The yellow tang did look like he was getting better but has now reverted back to showing signs of HLLE again.

In addition to this, I noticed that my purple tang is showing signs of HLLE as of tonight so I knew some parameter obviously is out of sync.

The first thing that came to my mind again was stray voltage as the onset of the HLLE came when my mag return pump was giving off stray voltage but I just had done a large water change around the same time and changed out my carbon (which may have accidentally released some fines into the display tank). Seeing as this could have also contributed to the initial cause of the HLLE in the blueface angel, I couldn't be sure of the cause but I'm now leaning more towards the stray voltage issue.

Earlier today, when cleaning my tank I felt a pretty sharp shock in my one hand that had a few minor cuts on it whenever I touched the saltwater. This isn't the first time this has happened and I had thought that it was due to the small amount of voltage created by the movement of the saltwater through the PVC plumbing. Then I was reading up on testing for stray voltage again and one of the first points the article mentioned was that people often notice they have stray voltage when they feel a small shock when they submerse an open cut in their aquarium.

So I busted out the multimeter and did some testing.

With everything plugged in and my multimeter grounded out to 3 prong extension cord and the positive lead in my sump, I was getting a reading of 9.5V AC. I initially tried unplugging one item at a time to see if there was an obvious culprit but the voltage only dropped by ~0.5V AC for every item I unplugged except for my return pump which actually caused the voltage reading to jump up to ~14V AC after it was unplugged.

After doing this, I unplugged every item from the tank and plugged them in one at a time to see if I could find the culprit this way. This however did not go over so well as every single electrical component in my tank appears to be giving off stray voltage, even though some are not even exposed to the water like my fuge lights, vortechs, light fixture, etc.

Here are what the readings looked like:

Vertex Alpha 250 skimmer + auto shut off float switch 4.2V
Red dragon skimmer pump when disconnected from float switch 3.3V
Mag 9.5 4.1V
500 Watt titanium finnex heater 3.2V
300 Watt via aqua titanium heater 0.8V
Vortech 0.8V
Vortech 2 0.7V
Vortech 3 0.6V
Vortech 4 0.8V
Milwaukee pH controller 1.6V
Marine Magic doser 0.1V
Turbo twist UV sterelizer 0.7V
Mag 18 return pump 23.9V
Compact Flourescent fuge lighting 1.6V
JBJ auto top off 1.8V
T5 bank 1 1.8V
T5 bank 2 2.6V
T5 bank 3 4.3V
12V T5 cooling fans 3.4V
Moonlights in T5 fixture 2.9V
Vertex vectra skimmer cleaner 0.1V

The one item that throws up the biggest red flag is the Mag 18 return pump as on its own it registered at 23.9V but for some reason when everything else was plugged in and I unplugged only the return pump, the voltage jumped from 9.5V up to 14V.

As you can tell, I'm obviously quite puzzled by this situation and am quite concerned as the well being of my fish is being affected by this situation. My coral health has also been steadily declining over the past few months and I am now dealing with a fair amount of STN and some serious browning in most of my frags and colonies despite having zero nitrates, minimal phosphates (was zero prior to increasing feedings to help fish fight HLLE) and Ca, Alk and Mg all in check.

The only scenario I can think of is that my house wiring is somehow to blame for the stray voltage but I have no idea how I'd be able to test for this.

The reef tank is running off of 2 dedicated 15 AMP breakers (non GFI) that have nothing else on them besides the equipment listed above. I haven't changed any of the wiring in the house in the past year and a half (other than installing infloor heating in my bathroom but this was only a few weeks ago and much later than the onset of the HLLE) and this tank has been up and running in this house for over 4 years, 3 of which I didn't have any major problems with the tank.

I did have 2 ballasts recently blow in my Sfiligoi light fixture and haven't had a chance to replace them yet and a few of the LEDs in the moonlight have burnt out due to overheating but other than that the rest of the equipment is in tip top shape so I can't see any of this being the problem.

The powerbars that have the equipment plugged into them are a few years old and have obviously seen their fare share of moisture which is why I used a different extension cord to test each item individually for stray voltage to rule out them being the root cause of the problem. The tank also does not have a grounding probe currently installed.

Any insight into the world of stray voltage would be greatly appreciated. I'm at a serious loss for what to do next and will likely end up throwing in the towel if I can't get this situation resolved as I'd rather see my livestock moved to a better home where they can recover than see them go on suffering in my system. I've been in this hobby for nearly a decade now and have never had to deal with so many problems as I've had this past year and I'm thinking a lot of them can likely be attributed to this stray voltage issue.
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Old 07-03-2013, 05:50 AM
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Forgot to metion, I'm not getting any stray current this time around. Just 9.5V of AC voltage when all my equipment is plugged in but I am getting shocked when a cut hand enters the tank.

Last time around, at the onset of the HLLE I was getting stray current, 0.3 Amps of AC electricity due to a shot seal on my spare Mag 18 return pump.
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