coral electrocution !

jonh5150

jonh5150

New member
So no good deed goes unpunished.... I was moving my powerheads and cleaning up the cords and my dog who is afraid of storms knocked a powerstrip into the refugium. It tripped the breaker but It took me 30 seconds to realize! I unplugged it and got it out. the fish seemed fine but the corals are a different story. The zoas closed slowly and the hammer actually stopped moving for a minute or two as did the Jasmine polyps before they closed up. The xenia actually looks unaffected. I am wondering if the got electrocuted or if something got added to the water like copper? I don':afraid:t know what to do.
 
Thats a bummer. All tanks should have a ground probe, same reason you don't want to live under power lines. (Stay voltage) All the items in the aquarium will also give off some voltage when operating. Try putting a volt meter on your tank if you have one. Turning off each piece of equipment until the only thing left are the lights and there is still 1 to 1.5 volts AC. That will get your attention. My six foot halide fixture 15" above the tank was emitting that. After grounding zero.
 
Please research grounding probes before using one. Many, including me, believe them to be more harmful than beneficial. The reasons are online. Its a commonly debated topic.
One thing most people agree on is that you should have the aquarium plugged into a GFCI outlet. This would have prevented what happened in your scenario.

All you can do now it wait. Your corals should be ok, but some corals may need some recovery time.
 
How ever you protect the power you should look into getting that power strip mounted erhier with zipties with holes or the mount on back side takes just couple min and will make you feel a bit better good luck glad you were there
 
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