This could have been very bad.

vcreefer26

vcreefer26

Member
This morning around 9:30am my wife calls me and says my 70 gallon tank is on fire. To put the fire out she through pots of water all over everything and I told her to shut the power off to the entire house to make sure it doesn't start up again. And I can home to find this. The really bad part is that my wife was not supposed to be home if she wasn't we probably would of lost everything. For what I think happened is that the mag drive pump I was using to return water from my sump frooze up and the power strip started to heat up until it caught fire. WOW what a close one. I hope this never happens again and I hope it never happens to anyone else. Good luck to all.

 
fishy head

fishy head

Member
i feel bad for you
,,, i hope your tank does well and i hope they replace your stuff too. luckly it did heat your tank up to much,
i had a friend that had a saltwater fish tank that went up in flames, and all of his fish went up in flames, it was very sad, but he got a new one.
hope yours does ok, i would make some drip loopes on your power cord next time.
 
ice4ice

ice4ice

Active Member
That looks like a ordinary power strip you got there. They are NOT for aquarium uses !! Look at the fine print on the power strip package next time you look to buy another one. You have to look for the ones FOR aquarium uses. That's why you went up in flames. Also, it does help if you had a GFI wall plug installed as well.
 
mandarin w

mandarin w

Member
You wife was very lucky herself. She could have been ZAPPED when she threw the pots of water on the fire. Never use water to put out an electrical fire. Foam, Flour, something dry to smuther the fire. She was very lucky that the fire didn't flare up and spark when she did that. Thank Heavens she was there, so the fire didn't get out of control and no one got hurt!
You should check all of your extension cords and make sure that they have surge protection and the wall is GFI. If not buy the GFI outlet or the adaptor. They are expensive about $26.00., but that is a lot less than your home. Make sure you have drip loops on all your plugs to the extention cords, and the extention to the wall. Don't ever just lay the extention cord on the floor with the equipment plugged into it. You are looking at a fire, or someone getting shocked. And lastly, any unuse plugs in the extention cord should be plugged up. You can use the baby safty plugs they are made so little ones don't stick things into sockets. I realize you may have done some of this already. But so many new people getting to the hobby every day. I figured this should be said, so they will know too.
Sometimes we get a free wakeup call, and sometime we have to pay the price. Thank God this was a freebie.
 
f14peter

f14peter

Member
First of all, happy things worked out (Sometimes we don't know why they do, but they do).
Agree with Mandarin in that please do not use water to extinguish electrical fires. I'll also agree that it looks like a pretty generic powerstrip and they're not made to handle really heavy loads.
I know a little about electricity, enough that I dont' want to screw around with it. Thus, I bought heavy-duty GFI power boxes made by SHOCK BUSTER run through grounded outlets . . .

. . . and made sure they were mounted as high up in the stand as possible, and had drip-loops on the cords. Also, every cord I'm using is heavy (read: thick) as thicker cords resist heat build-up waaaaay better than thinner ones, and have spread the electrical load out so that I'm not running everything through one or two wall outlets. Also, like Mandarin I covered every unused outlet.
 
mandarin w

mandarin w

Member
Peter, I like your power boxes, I haven't seen those before, Where did you pick those up. Those yellow boxes are GFI aren't they? I will want to pick those up.
 
f14peter

f14peter

Member
Originally Posted by mandarin w
Peter, I like your power boxes, I haven't seen those before, Where did you pick those up. Those yellow boxes are GFI aren't they? I will want to pick those up.
They're SHOCK BUSTER brand, got them at Lowes (found them where they stock extension cords) and I like them very much. Indeed, they have GFI switches in a housing integral with the plug, as well as a power on/off switches on the boxes themselves. IIRC, they ran around $30 each and the cord's around five-six feet long. I think many aquarium supply joints carry them too.
Only problem (if it qualifies as a problem) is that the GFI housings are fairly large and I wanted to plug two of them in side-by-side on my quad wall outlet, but they wouldn't go into the outlets square. Easy remedy was to carefully sand the edges of the housings where they meet and I was able to get them into the plugs.
They also make couple of other GFI gizmos that're pretty handy. One is a cable about three feet long, but it has a triple outlet and the GFI housing is in the middle of the cord so it's easier to plug into your wall outlet. Another is just the GFI housing with an outlet.
Here's their product line . . .
 
pumper7

pumper7

New Member

Originally Posted by mandarin w
You wife was very lucky herself. She could have been ZAPPED when she threw the pots of water on the fire. Never use water to put out an electrical fire. Foam, Flour, something dry to smuther the fire. .

DO NOT TRY TO use flour. Flour is flamable and actually explosive. BAKING SODA is an extinguishing agent though.
 
vcreefer26

vcreefer26

Member
Thank you all your reply's and ideas on how I can fix the problem. I am going to Lowes asap to pick up those GFI's. I hope this never happens to anyone else. So please listen to everyones advice. Thanx again and good luck to all.
 
rmahnick

rmahnick

Member
Lowes or Home Depot does selling shockbuster. the price between 10 to 20 dollars. I bought the 4 outlet shockbuster for 25.99 and gfci shockbuster for 13.99 at lowes
I checked at aqaurium supply, they cost from 25 to 40. check it out at lowes
glad that everything went alright no serious damage. I will check to make sure everything is ok. never know it could happen any sec.
 
ice4ice

ice4ice

Active Member
As long as you're there, find a power strip that can be use for aquarium uses !!! Maybe a Coralife powerstrip at your LFS.
 
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