A very bad night

ac

ac

Member
My wife and I came home Friday night to smoke alarms screaming. You guessed it one of the tanks caught fire. The damage is extensive behind the in wall tank. The GFCI failed to trip and the fire melted my sump and burned up several pumps. The worst of it is there's sout everywhere in the house. I tried to get to the basement to put out any fire that was left and only bought myself a trip to the hospital for smoke inhalation. The livestock in the 200 gallon tank(2 baby rays and an epaullette shark) were alright and I was able to transfer them to my 320. The moral of the story is keep your salt creep in check, and I would recommend sealing all of your electical connections with silicon. Anyway the cleaning begins, I just wanted to share so maybe someone else could avoid this heart ache
 
julius

julius

Member
sorry 2 hear that,that's good to hear that no one was hurt and you still have a home 2 go to,thank the lord for that one.
 
tony detroit

tony detroit

Active Member
Ac, sorry, on a better note, you didn't lose your whole house. I almost had a similiar incident, I then mount my surge protectors inverted so water drips right past the openings, but there is always some thing that can fail.
 
ac

ac

Member
Just an update. The city electrical inspector came to investigate the fire and give me suggestions on how to avoid another one. He recommended replacing the breakers the tanks were on with arc fault breakers and keep using GFCI outlets. With this protection, according to the inspector, just about any equipment malfunction should result in the power being shut off to the tank. I installed three of them to cover my 6 tanks.
 
tony detroit

tony detroit

Active Member
Do you have any reading on an arc fault breaker, or any explanation if you don't mind, I'm kinda curious.
Thanks, and I kinda had a rough week last week with my tank as well.
tank leak
 
ac

ac

Member
I don't have any reading on them. I'm sure if you do a search on the web you could find out some specifics. Basically as of two years ago they became code for use in bedroom circuits. They detect faults that may cause cords to heat up and also shorts. So between the ability to detect ground faults with a GFCI outlet and the ability to detect overloads that don't necessarily cause a breaker to trip, but can cause heating or fire in say extension cords the inspector thought I would be covered about as well as I could be.
 
ac

ac

Member
yes they do, I got mine at Lowes. They run about $40 a piece. A little pricey, but not as expensive as a fire.
 
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