Electricity in the water! Help!

[goby2]

Every time I reach my hand into my tank I get a strong electric shock. I can only feel it on a few cuts on my fingers, but it feels like I just stuck my hand into an outlet. I stuck my hand into a bucket of saltwater to make sure it wasn't just the salt.None of the animals seem to be effected at all(fish, snails, crabs, anemones,etc.). my friend at the fish store says she always gets shocked by the tanks there. does anyone else have this problem?How can I fix it? Is it hurting anything? thanks.

 

[Len]

If it's enough voltage that you can feel it, you gotta find the source. Anything electrical and in contact with the water is a suspect. Powerheads/pumps and heaters are the usual suspects. Just switch them on individually and find out which is the culprit, then replace it. Using a multimeter would be safer then checking with your hands.

Stray electricity can harm organisms over time. It's a good idea to have a grounding probe to reduce small amounts of electricity put into the tank. But again, if it's strong enough to shock you, that constitutes a serious problem that you need to fix ASAP. It's neither good for your fish or safe for you.

 

[goby2]

I found it! it was the pump for my skimmer (250gph, 23w). I took it out, cleaned it and turned it back on. I still got shocked, but it was very faint. I could just barely feel it, and only on a small cut on my finger. I left it off just to be safe.How can I fix it?

Ive heard horror stories about the fish being electrocuted when the heater breaks, shouldn't everthing be dead? Nothing seemed to be showing any signs of being effected by it at all. This has been going on for a few days, but I thought it was just the salt in my wounds

 

[Anonymous]

If its a small pump like that, just toss it out and get a new one, its not worth trying to figure out where there's a lose wire exposed to saltwater or something.

Infact regardless of the cost of the item I wouldn't reuse it.

 

[Anonymous]

Use it for mixing saltwater. But buy a new one for your tank. Also, buy a grounding probe or two (one for the tank, one for the sump.)

B

 

[Anonymous]

Now do we need to go over how ground probes don't do much help again

 

[Anonymous]

Get rid of the power head period...its no joke when messing with alternating current..dont even use it to mix salt water...Too much risk of electrical shock....

 

[goby2]

It wasnt a very good skimmer anyway. Maybe I will just use this as a chance to uprade.

How long can I go without a skimmer? what's a grounding probe?, and why werent the fish effected by the electricity?

 

[Anonymous]

Now do we need to go over how ground probes don't do much help again

link please!

I have one zip tied to my heater. When the heater broke, the shortest path to ground was really short then.

B

 

[Anonymous]

Now do we need to go over how ground probes don't do much help again

link please!

I have one zip tied to my heater. When the heater broke, the shortest path to ground was really short then.

B

Well no link right now, granted I just woke up, and flipped the news on to see the London things, I'll try to get one to you later if i can find it though.

But seriously, without a ground probe there is no path to ground that's sufficiently "close" for current to travel (atleast enough for 110V to cross) (unless you have a stream of water leaking down your tank or something). So it creates a place for current to drain where there wasn't one before. Now of course it would help you the human from getting zapped.. although a little pain is usually good to tell you there's a problem.. but in the case of the above guy would have never known about the problem with the powerhead and could potentially have stray current just running around his tank.

 

[garagebrian]

Maybe I'm missing something, but shouldn't your GFCI outlet have tripped when your pump started going bad and started shocking the water?

 

[zonkers]

I was reading this article on HLLE & its theoretical causes, & it touched on stray voltage & ground probes. If I'm interpreting this right, there actually is no voltage in the water until the circuit is completed. If there's an exposed wire on the power head, that doesn't mean there's voltage in the tank-- until it has someplace to go, in this case, goby2's hands, or if he follows popular advice, he installs a ground probe.

Think of when you go to jumpstart your car. After you've connect the positive & negative leads to the good battery, you can handle either free positive or negative clamp individually without danger, just not both, because only then do you complete the circuit. Until that point, there is no flow of electricity.

What I took away from this article was that a ground probe is ultimately to protect the aquarists life should something fall in the water that shouldn't, not as a measure against stray voltage. Only after removing any item that has an exposed connection like this power head should a ground probe be installed. Thoughts?

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-06/sp/index.htm

 

[Rikko]

If you have a grounding probe you should also have a GFCI - without the GFCI you will have current flowing through the tank, and that tends to piss off your inhabitants. If you just have stray voltage with no current behind it, it's not as much of an issue.

I don't have a grounding probe (too cheap and lazy, really) but my GFCI has saved my life and my house on a couple of occasions.

What the GFCI is doing is basically counting electrons - if 2 go in and only 1 comes out, we have a ground fault and it kills the circuit. You could basically throw a hair dryer into your bathtub and if it were on a GFCI you shouldn't even realize anything had happened. It's the ultimate failsafe.

The grounding probe just draws stray voltage and dumps it into ground. If the voltage is coming from a defective electrical appliance THAT IS BAD. If it's simply voltage induced through your lighting or whatever, then that's one way to funnel away the voltage. With a combination GFCI/probe, if an appliance is leaking voltage into the tank, it should trickle to ground via the probe - then the GFCI detects that and kills all power. Then it's your job to unplug everything, reset the GFCI, and plug everything back in one by one until you find the offender... and then throw it in the garbage Even a "little" current in the water is a bad thing and you don't want to be playing with that. Considering all the money, blood, sweat, and tears you've thrown into your tank, it seems silly to risk it all (and your home and your life) by letting a known "bad" appliance keep leaking.

 

[Anonymous]

If I'm interpreting this right, there actually is no voltage in the water until the circuit is completed. If there's an exposed wire on the power head, that doesn't mean there's voltage in the tank-- until it has someplace to go, in this case, goby2's hands, or if he follows popular advice, he installs a ground probe.

So why does it sting your finger when you put it in the tank? I'm not touching anything that can complete the circuit-electrically. But I still feel the current. Why? My guess is because of my body's own elec sytem.

So the higer life forms in my tank with brains (thus neurons and electrical pulses) are surrounded by the 'non circuit completed water' do they feel it?

B

 

[zonkers]

So why does it sting your finger when you put it in the tank? I'm not touching anything that can complete the circuit-electrically. But I still feel the current.

B

I really don't know, & am not claiming to. My thinking is that it's something like picking up a static charge. In my house in the winter time, I can pick up a hell of a static electrical charge from my couch, but only if I'm wearing sneakers. I'm insulated-- I can hold a charge, but it's stuck in me until I discharge it on something metal (or my wife ). But if I'm just in my socks, I can't pick anything up.

Maybe goby2's zaps are the inverse-- the tank is discharging a limited amount into him. If he were holding a grounded wire when sticking his hand in the tank, then maybe he'd feel a full current. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, I think I've gotten static zaps from my tank during the winter... I wonder which way it was going?

 

[Anonymous]

The GFCI is a safety device. Use one. The grounding probe my in fact increase your danger of shock. When working around electricity you will rarely find an electrician looking to ground themselves. Its just one more path for current flow and my be the one that effects you.
A grounding probe may or may not help your fish. It's conjucture so far with little or no real data!

 

[Anonymous]

So why does it sting your finger when you put it in the tank? I'm not touching anything that can complete the circuit-electrically. But I still feel the current. Why? My guess is because of my body's own elec sytem.

That's because you are the one completing a path to ground. Ground doesn't necessarily have to be the literal ground, just someplace that's at a lower potential that excess electrons can flow to, ie the floor (yes even when you're wearing shoes) When you stick your hand in the tank of water your hand gets coated the electrical resistance of your skin goes from about 1 Mohm to 200ohms (factor of 5000 smaller). Having cuts on your hand only decrease your resistance further since blood is a lot more conductive than skin, which is why the guy was feeling it on his hand with cuts.

Now in order to feel a little zap/tingle (ie not enough to knock your on your butt) it only takes about 1mA for it to do it, your GFCI will trip at around 5mA the threshhold of death for current across your heart, which is why our GFCI doesn't trip, if your GFCI does trip it means it just potentially saved your life.

So the higer life forms in my tank with brains (thus neurons and electrical pulses) are surrounded by the 'non circuit completed water' do they feel it?

B

If there's only one faulty piece of equipment then think of the fish as a bird on a wire, they don't feel the high voltage because they're at the same potential at the wire, but if one of the bird's wings ends up touching another wire then BBQ will happen (which FYI is what powercompanies use to gauge how far they need to make powerlines, the wing span of the largest birds in the area that do sit on powerlines )