almost had a fire!!!

[lazyreefer]

Woke up today not feeling 100%.. like something was wrong... after I took a shower, walk to the tank and I smell smoke.
I use a 3 gallon jug to top off my 29 gallon tank with a slow drip. I put a fresh 3 gallon over the 29 last night and I guess I set the drip a little too fast because the when I saw the jug in the morning it was empty!!! crap!!!! had about 1/2 gallon on the floor and the worst thing was that some of the water got on the socket and burned a bit.. Man I need a auto top off. thank GOD i cought it early might have been Homeless. Getting a top off tomorrow and a GFCI socket installed as soon as I can. Also thinking of moving the tank to a different location... far away from the wall socket.

Double check your power cords.

 

[noodleman]

ooh man you got to watch out about those drippers. Hope your ok

 

[inline6]

That was lucky (that you're not homeless).
Kinda makes you paranoid about any type of fishy business, I know how lucky I was when my tank cracked and I was home.

 

[Tonyscoots84]

i had a similar problem with my surge.. my skimmer was overfilling and it was dripping water on my surge i heard sizzling i was like wth is it. so i got up and looked and the surge was smoking.... so now i moved all surges away from that area.... thank god my house didnt burn down.. lol

 

[glipper69]

4 initials GFCI on all your sockets anywhere in the room. act as if it is a bathroom. don't take chances.

good luck
Frank

 

[DRZL]

<~~~~~Not to lucky with GFCI's either, im glad you caught it in time

 

[Quang]

Thats like so damn scary. Glad to here you're ok. Everything happens for a reason so take the hint. I will take some extra safety precautions too now.

 

[LiquidBlues]

i had a very similar incident a couple months ago

since my tank doesn't have a sump
i stick a bag of carbon into my protein skimmer output...and that one time after i finished my water change and changing the carbon... i added too much carbon in the filter bag... and the water started go out of the intended path

then in the middle of the night
since the tank is near my bed... i heard the sizzling sound and smelled burnt
i rushed to the fish tank... and guess what
first thing i did.. stupidly
i tried to push the red switch on the power surge and got zapped !!

not too bad though.. haha yeh i know water... electric...
it was 3 in the morning !!

anyways, good thing i had a pair of rubber gloves and i was able to unplug the outlets

 

[DEEPWATER]

Good that you caught it one time
Let me add something so this does not happen to you or anyone again

Make sure your you have a LOOP one you cord
I.E ,,the wire should be reach BELOW your Electrical outlet (about 5"or more ) and then LOOPED back up and inserted into the the outlet

This will allow the water to drip off the wiire onto the floor and not your outlet

Most PH ,pumps and so on ,come with long cords so you may be able to put the cord on the fl ,and then into the outlet ,that how i have all my cords ,so if it ever drips out it will just go on the floor JMO

 

[herman]

All is good that ends good!!!!!!

 

[Chiefmcfuz]

GFCI + Drip Loops and Distance = good fire safety. Also do not overload sockets and circuits spread it out.

 

[masterswimmer]

Drip loops = good
Distance = good
GFCI is a touchy subject. Not sure if folks know that it is against code to hook any life support apparatus to a GFCI. As great a protection as they are, GFCI's have been known to fail (quite regularly actually). If they were to fail on say a dialysis machine, there would be major life threatening implications.

Well technically our tanks are life support systems. Now I know that for safety reasons a GFCI is a must. However, if it does malfunction/fail lets say five minutes after you go to work. You come home 8 - 9 hrs later and there was no flow, no heat, no circulation in your tank, that would be pretty devastating.

I know I'm about to get bashed by all the GFCI cops out there, but I do run my system without GFCI protection. I just use a titanium grounding probe. Call me nuts, but at least I'd be meeting my maker doing what I love.

Ok, off my soapbox, now you can start flaming away (pun intended)!

Russ

 

[alistair]

I had an incident with the tank in my office.....
The pump came loose from the HOB Skimmer and pumped 50% of the tank water out over the floor, onto the wall outlet and power strip. I managed to cause a power outage to a whole wing of office building.

 

[Chiefmcfuz]

Oh and lazy there is no almost about it you did have a fire.

 

[jenniebutterfly]

that sucks. well, i hope you move the tank over a bit. i use a power strip and have my tanks at least 5 feet from the outlets. and i hang the power strip on the wall about 2 feet from the floor so it creates a drip line. so if there is an overflow, it would only get on the floor but think of it this way, it could have been a whole lot worse.