Live Current in water

[fitz19d]

Just found out I have aparrently some semi decent current running in my saltwater tank. Perhaps cause for some problems more than some nutrients that got high.

Found it out by accident. Had hand in tank and stepped on some rubber airline tubing and got that lovely tingle. Not sure if I insulated myself to make it zap me or I was completing a circuit, I dunno not electric dude.



Anyone Jtown/Milliken have a multimeter or something they could come over with or borrow? Any advice for finding the offending device other than unplugging things one at a time and zapping myself?

[Firehaus]

Replace your heater, likely the main cause.


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[fitz19d]

210g salt tank so I have a dozen or more things including a few heaters.

I'll try them one at a time, I'm actually suspicious of some chinese products.

[Wulf202]

I have a multimeter you can borrow but you still need to troubleshoot whats doing it by removing them in groups or one at a time.

You completed the ground. The air pump could also be a cause

[fitz19d]

No air pump, was just loose tubing I had left laying from acclimating a few days ago.

I've been shocked enough, I think I'll just eat the fuzzy feelings. Need to find my harbor coupons and get a multimeter so I can get a reading, see just how high it is.

[rbeau30]

No air pump, was just loose tubing I had left laying from acclimating a few days ago.

I've been shocked enough, I think I'll just eat the fuzzy feelings. Need to find my harbor coupons and get a multimeter so I can get a reading, see just how high it is.


I got a coupon for a free one!

[Great-Kazoo]

210g salt tank so I have a dozen or more things including a few heaters.

I'll try them one at a time, I'm actually suspicious of some ? chinese products.

[Firehaus]

Anytime I had the issue in any of my tanks it was always the heater. Even ones that had been fine for years. But it's why I like the vortechs since the power is kept out of the water.


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[fitz19d]

Offending item was a Hyrdo nano sized powerhead. Still going to get a meter to see where im at with just ambient current

[Firehaus]

Nice find. Vortechs or wave boxes are the way to go.


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[fitz19d]

I needed some extra flow in a kinda unique spot.

Like my WP40/25's though a 25 just crapped out on me.

Sadly means the electricity wasn't the cause of some die offs. (Coral wise at least, trying to remember if my lion was after I added it. Odd loss and the other dozen fish are fine.)

[Firehaus]

How long has this tank been up?


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[fitz19d]

Current "tank" about 8 months, most of the contents not toofar off from 2 years. (70% of the live rock was transfered 5 foot into this tank and the last 30% was some stuff I'd cooked for 3months)

During the last 5 months of a 1 hour each way trip to work + house buying crazyness I just let things go. Not enough water changes paired with spurts of way heavy feeding with new skinny or picky fish. (Butterfly ate in store, never did in tank but for a few bloodworms) Anywho phosphates got high. Lost acan's, wellso, scolly few random other things. Anemones were fine as well as a lot of my sps and euphylia. Got a reactor going, though I used half recommended and still ended up nuking the phos down way too fast and now that's when I've lost a few more things, and all my anemones/euphylia look shriveled/pissed. Been almost a month already and they havnt died at least. So hoping they'll recover. Snails in general havnt been doing well. All other livestock other than fumanchu starving itself to death are great.

In the meantime to avoid releasing all that phosphate/nitrate I'd been avoiding scraping algae. Now I've got i'm not sure what all, looks like green hair algae but it's brown, dark dark purple I assume cyano. And probably a few other pest algaes. Need to swap out carbon today, check if my GFO is exhausted yet, and I'm going to try a slow siphon and go around with the scraper trying to get a lot of the gunk out. (It's threatening to grow over my zoa's and such.) Tuxedo urchin seems to eat the GHA, but nothing else seems to touch it much.

[Firehaus]

Have you reduced your light cycle? What's the tds of your water that your putting in the tank? Refugium? What kind of skimmer?

I've never ran any gfo or phosphate reactors on my tanks.

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[fitz19d]

I havnt gone as far as a 2-3 day blackout, as I'm nervous the stressed corals wouldnt take it. My Tds meter says an out of 0. Yes I have a refugium with a ton of liverock, some trash soft corals, chaeto, and sea lettuce. Reef Octo in sump, forget model. Is probably a hair undersized now that I have more fish.

Me neither, but once I had such problems needed to address it. I've been cutting back on feedings too. Though I probably still overfeed, hard to tell without seeing visually what others do. (And I worry about a couple timid fish getting their fill.)