Moved my fish tank this weekend to the basement and I’m in the process of re-setting it up. Bought a new surge protector, plugged everything in and there’s electricity in the water (Surprise!). The surge protector is fine, both lights for grounded and w/e are on. Googling says it’s probably a broken heater or powerhead. So I went and bought a circuit tester, it says the waters got charge. I unplugged everything and the water still has charge. How do I get that charge outta the water so I can figure out what part is broken? Can I run a copper wire to my water line? Just wait it out? It’s saltwater so the salt will hold a charge, I just don’t know how long.
You can ground it to a water line, I’m assuming its a very small voltage.
ha, weird. in for results
I was glad I was able to get my hand out, I’ve heard horror stories of guys not being able to get their arms out when they were moving rocks and breaking a heater. That’s why you always unplug your shit when you’re doing tank maintenance. I was just feeding the fuckers and got jolted.
Thanks for the insight, I’ll give the copper line to the water line a shot on sunday when I get back in town.
make a video when you do it
It’s not a telephone pole, it’s a little electricity in a fish tank. You’d get more of a show putting aluminum foil in the microwave.
just ground it and you will be fine. It should be grounded anyhow, that will save you from being jolted in the future.
The water should be grounded? I’ve got my surge protector into the first grounded outlet in line from the basement breaker box. The breaker box is grounded to the water line.
The setup should be on a GFCI and your heater should use three wire (H/N/G) not just two. If there is only hot and neutral you can really hurt yourself if that thing cracks while in water. I killed a tank of fish that way. If it is on a gfci, it will trip out hopefully fast enough.
I thought I read you shouldn’t plug a surge protector into a gfci outlet? All my heaters and both filters are 3 prong, the power heads are 2 prong that are plugged into 2-3 prong thats screwed into the outlet. I’ve got no problem putting in a gfci, I just didn’t think it was recommended for whatever reason. Would I be better off with a power strip into a gfci? That wouldn’t protect the tank if the power came into the house right? Problem is, I need 10 outlets for the tank…
Thanks for the help btw, much appreciated. I try to read as much as I can, but maybe I should be asking an electrician(you), not a aquarium hobbyist haha.
as far as i know its okay to use a power strip/surge protector with a gfci. How many volts charge does the water have? I had an issue one time getting shocked by my pool light one time and thought it was energized, even though it was off and the case was grounded. The grounding was good, and what was happening was the electric service neutral/ground from the pole to my house was open, so the neutral and grounds inside the house were floating above ground potential leading to me getting zapped when i touched “grounded” devices… My cold water ground is pretty good too.
I dont have a voltmeter to see exactly how much is in it, it felt like if you touched the sides of an electrical receptical when it’s hot. It was enough to put me on my knees.
i know this sounds kind of dumb but if you put a small light bulb like a turn signal light in the water will it light up? it would slowly discharge the electricity and it could be a safety feature.
yikes… i got zapped last week too… weird.
hopefully you’ll get this resolved…
Wow that sounds like one hell of a setup for a prank on someone.
im still sticking with the idea that theres a capacitor still holding a charge… esp if its all unplugged.
the salinity of the tank is acting like a capacitor
So here’s the situation as of right now. With nothing plugged in the tank, it holds charge until I ground it to the water pipe. All charge goes away. As soon as one thing gets plugged in the charge comes back. I tried every piece seperately and they all do the same thing. So I exchanged the surge protector for a new one and same story. I tried two different outlets, same results. Both are grounded. I’m gonna grab a multimeter and see how much voltage is in the tank, I’m using a continuity tester so maybe the thing lights up even for a tiny bit of electricity. I’m not dunkin my hand in the water to find out tho haha. I’m also going to install a gfci for my safety. I did a little research on using a grounding probe in the water, so guys say they do it some guys don’t. Since it’s not a high dollar reef tank but more of a community tank I think I’m going to go for it if I can’t get this figured out. Most guys use a titanium bicycle spoke, so I’ll get one from the shop on Englewood tomorrow. Thanks for the input, I’ll keep this updated.