WARNING: Tank Fire!

brainrush

brainrush

Member
Hello All. Just wanted to warn all tank owners once again that the chance of a fire being started by your aquarium is a VERY REAL possibility.
This morning one of my surge protectors caught fire. Luckily my dog (yes the cute one in my avatar) alerted me to the fire. It was straight out of Lassie. Bark Bark...what is it girl? ..bark...Timmy is caught in a well?...bark bark...what, my TANK IS ON FIRE!!

It surely was!
I guess over time the salt corroded one of the plugs and today (thankfully while I was home) it decided to short out and start a fire! I can only imagine what would have happened if I was not home.
Some advice to all tank owners:
1. Make sure you have a fire alarm directly above your tank. My closest alarm is in the hallway, and it never went off...despite it working fine when I tested it and the aquarium room being filled with stinky burnt plastic smoke!
2. Make sure you have a drip loop in all your plugged in cords. For those of you who don't know what this means, this simply means make sure the cord drops to a point BELOW where the plug is actually plugged in...this way water cannot creep down the cord into the socket. Since all water will drip to the lowest point of the cord.
3. Regularly inspect your plugs and surge protectors to make sure they are not corroded.
4. Listen to your dogs when they suddenly freak out for no apparent reason!
Today I was lucky. Check your aquariums now to make sure we all learn from this experience.
 
v-lioness

v-lioness

Member
Glad to hear you are fine .........
This is a good Idea & think I will do it

[hr]
> . Make sure you have a fire alarm directly above your tank. My closest alarm is in the hallway, and it never went off...despite it working fine when I tested it and the aquarium room being filled with stinky burnt plastic smoke!
I wipe down all of my cords every water change, this is just something I made habit. I used to rub Vaseline on them to help repel salt creep.
Kaye
 
alyssia

alyssia

Active Member
Originally Posted by tank watch
my dogs would run and hide , not wanting to be responsible for the fire...

 
fishy7

fishy7

Active Member

Thank you for the reminder and glad to see nothing major happened to you or your house!!!!!!!!
 
promisetbg

promisetbg

Active Member
Good advice..glad noone was hurt. Dogs are really your best friend are'nt they? I agree with getting her a nice big steak..she saved the day!
I kinked one of the cords going to the ballast of a set of power compacts the other day and flames started shooting from it! I remained calm{there's a first time for everything
} and unplugged everything. Now I have to replace the cord and ballast, but it could have been worse.
 
djm

djm

Member
This brings up another point- ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCI's) work GREAT unless THEY get wet. (I trust that EVERYONE is using GFCI's)
My water change routine used to be to syphon out water and replace it by just pouring 5 gallon buckets back in. Simple and effective- but there are some problems with this technique. First of all, the top of my 75 gallon reef tank is chest high (I'm 5'10") and 5 gallons of water isn't exactly light. Secondly, my lighting system sits directly on my tank, is constantly susceptible to any overspray, and is not easily movable. The flexibilty of moving it around was decreased even more when I installed a Coralife Super Skimmer in tank- I have no room in my sump for it.
At this point my best option for adding water was to turn my lighting system on its side, facing away from me, and adding the water at the front lefthand corner of the tank. (My skimmer is mounted on the rear righthand side, so this was the best possible pivot angle to avoid drowning my lights.) It was working quite well- UNTIL I had a spill. It didn't immediately seem like that big a deal. "Crap! My carpet is wet again. grrrrr" I'm glad that I didn't leave the area because it didn't take long before it looked like a fireworks display was going on INSIDE my GFCI. Panic time! Apparently, when I spilled, the water splashed off of the left pane of my tank and splashed directly into the outlet. That is bad news. A GFCI won't trip if IT is the cause of the fault. An electrical fire inside of a wall is pretty much unstoppable without poking dozens of holes in your wall soon after it starts AND removing the power source.
I got lucky. I hit the breaker switch in my garage before any fire actually started. Then I cleaned out my shorts.
This thread looked as good a place to post a "learn from other's mistakes" message as any.
 
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