Fire!!!!!!!

[bbronco]

my fish tank caught on fire last night!!! monday night is the only night i stay up past 10:30. it happed at 11:09pm I don't think i would have a house if i would have been sleeping!!!! all the other thing that where pluged in to the strip are fine. all fish are ok!!!!

same pic

 

[daniel411]

Really glad you didn't get hurt, or had it spread farther than that!
Did you have a drip loop and gfci outlets?

 

[bbronco]

the heater has been going bad for a while!!! i could smell it some time but i could never find what was making the smell!!! no wires where ever hot!!! glad i found it!!! glad it did not happen while i was at work!!!
drip loop, yes if oyu meen did i have it set up so the outlet could not get wet?
gfci outlets???? have no idea what this is?

 

[reefnut]

Definitely get a GFCI!! They also make them that will go inplace of your normal receptacle or they make breakers for the breaker box. Any of them will work.
The one kgrimes posted seems to be the easiest and it should work just fine!

 

[daniel411]

One of those odd rules no one really knows about but its even illegal (in many places) not to have GFI/GFCI outlets that a water device/aquarium plugs into.

 

[bigred]

Glad to hear everything is fine. I too almost had a fire once. I had salt build up between the prongs of my PC's. I came home from work and my tank was smoking from the canopy. My canopy was chared and the socket was fried. Luckyly I came home just in time.

 

[tony detroit]

Building/home inspectors in MI require that within a certain amound of feet of water that a gfci be used.
My prizm cooked a surge protector as well. Collector got full and I was doing something in the bedroom and my girlfriend started screaming so I ran out and unplugged it real quick. My plastic was all melted just like yours.