WARNING!!! Just had a fish tank fire under saltwater tank and destroyed house

jcohen

jcohen

Member
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE check your wires and receptacles and power strips. I was on vacation and I had a fire under my tank and lost my entire 75 gallon reef tank and caught the house on fire. I had the tank for 18 years. I am now moved out of my house for 4 months and everything in the house has soot and is damaged.

Don't be an idiot and make the same mistake I made. Check now. Make sure there is no moisture or salt anywhere around your plugs and power strips.

Happy New Year to all and please check.
 
Oh no I’m so sorry for your loss. Thanks for the warning. Unfortunately this is something that I don’t include in my routine maintenance program but should definitely incorporate going forward.
 
So sorry. Thanks for the reminder of the least glamorous and probably most overlooked maintenance check in the hobby. I need to do this today. Thanks. Best of luck.
 
I'm sorry to hear this and thanks for the warning. When you get settled again and you stay in the hobby post here and Im sure a bunch of us will have you get back up and running.
 
Following up...hope everything is as OK as possible. Per your warning, I finally got around to cleaning up the spaghetti salad that was my wiring for my 55. Thanks again and sorry for your loss.

FWIW, if anyone is looking to eliminate the cord mess with probably not enough adequate drip-loops, like I had, I picked this up at home depot today. Its layout is nice for up to 4 larger transformer-type plugs, and 6 regular plugs. $35 at Home depot, and I have my two lights, two wavemakers, 2 100w heaters, skimmer, return pump, UV and MJ setup all plugged in. It's steel housing, commercial grade, easy to mount to back of stand, board, etc.. I hooked it up to a GFCI outlet, and it has status lights that indicate grounding, etc. Built-in surge protection too I think. Mostly, I liked that it had a layout that worked for 6 regular plugs for most of my stuff, and 4 wide-spaced for the transformer plugs for lights and jebao wavemakers.

Finally, added up all my amperage for the tank to see how much I was drawing on a 15a circuit. I came up with at peak, 8.25 amp. Good to know for the whole circuit. Link for something very similar to what I bought is below. The one I got in-store was all steel.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Defiant-10-Outlet-Metal-Surge-Protector-with-15-ft-Cord-and-45-Degree-Flat-Angle-Plug-YLPT-46/203353698?MERCH=REC-_-NavPLPHorizontal1_rr-_-NA-_-203353698-_-N
 
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