looks like i had a close call

[kolosy]

went away on vacation for a week (and as a sidenote - got to see tangs etc in their habitat. makes me wish i had a 90+). come back to a frantic voicemail from a friend that was checking in on the tank "um... i think your tank is broken".

turns out, i left on saturday, power failed on sunday, and the GFCI blew and didn't switch back on once power came back. friend checked in on !tuesday! to find... obviously... things in bad shape. according to her "the fish were swimming on their side and everything was covered in slime". despite not having any information about this, she still proceeded to find the GFCI and turn it back on, and then spent some time blowing crud off the corals with a turkey baster.

so the damage...

new acro frag almost dead. out of ... 30 or so polyps about 6 or 7 are fully colored and have fairly good extension. the rest are gone.

my first coral, a plate that had done wonderfully in the tank, is gone.

so is my open brain.

everyone else looks okay. all fish present and accounted for, and seem happy.

surprisingly, my bird's nest seems to have made it just fine (a tiny frag that came along with the acro), as did the monti frag.

checked params, nh4/no2/no3 seem ok (undetectable)

temp in the tank dropped to 63F! i'm honestly not sure how it wasn't a total loss, but i'm quite happy that it seems to have made it through. i didn't have any wayter onhand, but am mixing up a 20% batch right now for a morning water change.

hopefully i'm out of the woods.

[Rae C.]

Ooh, lucky duck! Your petsitter had her wits about her when she checked in on everything.

[gwenvet]

What a nightmare! Why did the GFCI trip when the power went out...is that normal and are they supposed to reset when the power goes back on or do they have to be reset manually? I ask because my tank is getting its own circuit with GFCI but unless it's during the day no one will be there to reset it if the power goes out.

[evilspaz]

Wow lucky it wasnt a complete crash. Thats crazy. Luckily it wasnt my uncle who would just call me up and say "Your tanks not doing good but I gave all your fish a big feeding" as in dropping in a whole can of fish food.

[markhilken]

That is the reason why I don't use GFCI. Just another weak link in the chain, and for some reason it always goes out when your not around.

[imchris]

Wow, what a nightmare! Fortunately your friend is on the ball. Once when we went on vacation(late november in upstate NY) we had a neighbor/relative keep an eye on our place. When we got back he told us that after we left, the heat stopped working. He turned the thermostat up but that didn't do any good. Well we lost some fish, some birds, some kind of crab my brother had, the pipes under the house froze but luckily didn't break. We were like.... Why didn't you call us? He said he didn't want to bother us while we were on vacation. Geez. Just goes to show that you have to be careful who you let watch your place while you're gone. -Chris

[lamboraf]

I dont use GFCi as well ,as this has hapened to me before.

[kolosy]

so what is the general concensus on GFCIs?

[Rae C.]

There was a pretty hot headed thread last month about this very topic. I would rather have a tripped GFI and a dead tank, than have the house burn down because of an electrical short. It might be expensive and depressing to lose the whole tank, I'd probably curse about it too. But all in all, I'd rather have my house.

[Macimage]

I'd also rather have my house and more importantly, my life than the tanks. It is better to have the gfci trip rather than have your hand in the tank and get electrocuted if something goes wrong. Water and electricity basically don't mix well.

Joyce

[NCNBilly]

Spread out your pumps/heaters/etc over multiple GFCIs wired in parallel, that way no single GFCI tripping can do your tank in. I have 4 on mine.

I'd NEVER run a tank without one. I didn't on my first, and got very lucky that the fire department got there in under 5 minutes.

[Michael]

its best to run multipule gfci, litrally if you can afford it have individual ones on each pump etc, get the type which do no trip off when power goes back on, they may just save your life, by the way im glad your tank didnt completely crash

[cdness]

there are two different types of GFCIs... One will lock on and trip only if there is a short (kinda like the ones in most bathrooms). The other typw has a magnetic lock. These are used more often in conctruction areas because there are times where when the power goes out you want the tool to not just turn back on. That can be very dangerous so the magnetic ones are used. I have two magnetic ones and they suck for anything other than areas where you want them to stay off when the power goes out....

o to Home Depot or Lowes and buy a unch of GFCI outlets, a few electrical boxes (or 1 really big one) and some male end extension cords. They do sell the cords with just the male ends for projects like these. Then just run the power cords to a surge protector and you are all set. I still need to do this but that's my plan...