Shocking!

[dalee26]

For the past 2 weeks I have been having some weird stuff going on electrically wise in my tank. I felt a shock that was pulsing every few seconds when I put my arm in the tank, another time I reached over the light and it shocked me really good (arm was wet with saltwater) and the other day it almost blew my shoes off when I pulled my arm out of the tank.

I emailed Coralife and have not gotten anything back from them. I took the light apart and cleaned it out of all salt that made it anywhere into it.

I have 4 Korialia #4's, 3 other pumps, and a heater. I am thinking it is the light, but any info would help a ton. I have had the tank setup for a year now and it just started lighting up my senses recently.

Thanks!!

[wab]

You should have all the electric cords in a gfi (ground fault indicator receptacle) so you don't kill yourself for you hobby. You probably have a bad power head or pump motor so i would one at a time unplug and test in a gfi that you know works. Good luck and be careful.

[kraze3]

How are the corals and fish reacting?

I had my little cousin knock my cooling fan into my sump and it shocked the whole tank. If any stray current in water fish will hide/die and corals will close and start to melt away. It soulds lole it might be the light since it happens when you touch it. I would be very careful and I agree you need a GFI.

[thegrun]

+1 on the GFI. It could save your life! Please do not wait, get one today. They sell some built into an extension cord at Home Depot if you do not feel you are qualified to install one in the wall yourself. This is a must for any aquarium. Do it!

[dalee26]

It is in one. I should have mentioned that to begin with. The fish act fine. They are always out but the zoo always seem to be not fully opened.

[birddog486]

Get yourself a 3 prong extention cord and a voltage meter. Put the ground wire of the voltage meter into the ground on the cord and put the pos. wire from the meter(set to A/C) into the water.

If you show voltage, start unpluging things one at a time.

You may be suprised at what you find, my system makes almost 1 volt from all the bacterial processes.

[WaterKeeper]

+10 on the GFCI unless you don't feel your life is worth $25 bucks.

Good advise from all. Try to isolate the cause as birddog suggests. Sometimes a tank also gets an induced voltage and this is especially so if you have ballasts mounted in the canopy. This is where the electric field around the ballast imparts a current directly into the water. Here a grounding probe will remove that stray field current. Induced currents generally should not harm fish or corals as they are not grounded but there is a debate on this that has never been solved. Some people feel that induction currents may cause HLLE but it has not been proven.

[chris4869]

If you use a GFCI make sure you check your tank before leaving the house and check again coming back. It doesn't reset itself and may leave your tank powerless until you do.

[WaterKeeper]

Better the tank powerless than the reefer or one of the kids.